Summer should come in winter more often. I love the early sunsets, short twilights, and long nights of winter, but it sure would be nice to have shirt-sleeve temperatures and calm, dew-free conditions at the same time. A strong high pressure zone brought record warmth to central California during the week before winter solstice, 1998. Many observers took time during mid-week to take advantage of it. Reported high winds kept Dobson owners away from the high parts of the coast ranges, but I took Harvey, my white Celestron 14, to Fremont Peak on the evening of December 16, and found only gentle breezes that declined as the night wore on.

The winter sky contains a hodge-podge of stuff that most amateurs never look at. I had been accumulating a "cats and dogs" listing of assorted objects that I had not seen before, culled from many sources. I printed a copy to take with me.

My first item was Harrington 10, an enormous dark nebula, easily visible to the naked eye, that crosses the Milky Way in northern Cygnus. Many amateurs have probably seen it but not really noticed it.

Next, I turned to a couple of objects with NGC numbers, that were once thought to be open clusters but are no longer officially acknowledged. At the position of NGC 7024, I saw a fairly convincing cluster. At the magnification I used for most of the night, 98x (40 mm Vernonscope Erfle), I could see some 30 stars in the central portion of a 40-minute field, with a rather granular background glow perhaps indicating more. At the position of NGC 7234 was a two-minute patch of fuzz with perhaps ten stars superimposed. Nearby NGC 7235, a "real" cluster, was well resolved, and planetary PK 103+0.1 showed as an unsymmetrical blob with a central star, better seen when I temporarily increased magnification to 244x (16 mm Brandon).

Then I went on to Markarian 50, an easy cluster in the middle of a fascinating part of Cepheus. Here are the large nebulae Sh 2-157 and Sh 2-155. I could see both without a special filter, though my Orion UltraBlock improved their visibility greatly. The latter is sometimes called the "Cave Nebula". Nearby IC 1470 is plotted in the new Millennium Star Atlas as an elongated glob, but most of what I saw was a much smaller nebulous star. just a few arc-minutes in diameter. At 244x, it looked rather like a stubby comet, but it did not move, and did not diminish in brightness when I applied my UltraBlock filter, so I did not advise the I. A. U. I guessed right -- what I saw is on the Digitized Sky Survey images, and not what could have been Comet Freeman 1998. I also looked at NGC 7635, the "Bubble Nebula". I did not see the bubble itself, but the larger, curved bright patch was quite obvious, even without the filter. In this region also were many additional open clusters -- I looked at NGC 7510 and King 19.

I was using the UltraBlock monocle fashion, merely interposing it between my eye and the eyepiece. That is lots quicker than screwing it into something, and seems to work just as well. The rather short eye relief of the Erfle eyepiece is an advantage for this technique -- with a longer focal length, it would be much harder to shield my eye from stray light reflected from the filter's shiny surface.

It seemed to be a good night, so I decided to try bigger game. My cats and dogs list included several Abell galaxy clusters that I had not previously viewed. At the cataloged position of Abell 2634, I saw NGC 7720, and a few more galaxies just south and west. At the position of Abell 2666, I saw NGC 7785 and 7788 at 98x, and on increasing magnification to 244x, logged NGC 7786, NGC 7787, and a few more. It is a little deceptive to speak of "observing" these clusters with as small a field as 40 arc minutes -- they are often much larger. Yet brightest galaxies in a cluster are most commonly near its center, and it is usually difficult for me to see much more than the bright few in Harvey.

Abell 400 featured one prominent galaxy at approximately its cataloged position, and a rather casual glance showed half a dozen or so more in my 40-minute field. Abell 407 showed ten or more galaxies in its central field. Abell 539 and Abell 548 were even richer. The latter is way down in Lepus. Perhaps galaxies breed like rabbits. The best Abell cluster of the evening, however, was Abell 426, in Perseus, which has many members bright enough to have NGC numbers. I had looked at several before, but on this evening I logged no fewer than eighteen such cluster members, and more were visible.

Looking at these clusters reminds me of a well-known mystery story -- I won't give the title, in order not to spoil the secret for those who have not read it -- in which the detective can't figure out how the crime could possibly have been committed unless everyone he has interviewed had been in on it. Slowly it dawns on him that indeed, everyone was in on it! Dense Abell clusters are like that -- you see lots of fluff, and think it can't all be galaxies... but it is.

I looked at some Palomar globular clusters, too. Pal 1 appeared as a small bit of fuzz with a few embedded stars. Perhaps they were foreground stars. Pal 2 was just fuzz. Open cluster Stock 2, also on my list, was easy -- this huge object is not far from h and chi Perseii, and more than filled my 98x field -- had I not known it was there, I might not have noticed the increased density of stars.

I dropped in on one old friend, the Horsehead Nebula. At 98x, it was detectable without a filter, but the UltraBlock improved the view. I used to think the Horsehead was tough, but many of the other objects described herein were more difficult.

I also had with me a list of nearby galaxies, from Andrew Cole's web page, both in the local group and out of it, and decided to look for a few that I had not seen. WLM, the Pisces Dwarf, was sinking fast toward the southwestern horizon, but was nevertheless detectable. It has a prominent globular cluster, but it was getting too close to the horizon for me to find it -- perhaps some other time.

I looked for a much more difficult galaxy, Dwingeloo 1, and did not have success. I used one fancy trick -- sitting quietly for several minutes with my already well dark-adapted eyes shut, then fumbling to the eyepiece, and putting my still-closed eye to my cupped hands to look through it. By that means, I did detect a faint glow, briefly, for five or ten seconds after opening my eye, but the Digitized Sky Survey showed that I had seen merely a loose patch of background stars -- the real galaxy was several arc minutes away.

I wrapped up the evening with a sighting of Barnard's loop without using a telescope or binocular, just my UltraBlock monocle held to one eye. I believe it was the late Walter Scott Houston who originated that trick.