by Jay Reynolds Freeman
Taking advantage of a mid-week clear spell, I took my Stargazer Steve Sgr-3 3-inch f/10 Newtonian into my front yard in Palo Alto, California, just past midnight on March 9-10, 2000, for a brief Messier hunt. In previous setups with this telescope, I had worked my way through the winter Milky Way Messier objects, and a bit beyond. Now, with Leo past the meridian and Virgo well placed, it was time for more.
I started well south, using the supplied 17 mm Plossl for 45x, hunting globular cluster M68, under the trailing edge of Corvus. I seem to have improved my knack for using the optics-free unit-magnification peep sight, for I could easily locate reference stars for starting my star-hop. M68 was a dim glow, showing no trace of resolution, but clearly visible, well down in the light wall of southern Silicon Valley.
M104 was easier -- I am more familiar with the star-hop, and it was higher and had greater surface brightness. It showed elongation, but I could not see any finer structure, such as the central bulge or the dark lane. Central Leo was about to disappear behind a tree, so I moved north for a bit, to chase down M95, M96, and M105. I rarely use a Newtonian -- more often a Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope or a refractor, both with star diagonals -- so it was disconcerting having to star-hop without mentally reversing the charted field. Yet I did find all three galaxies, as well as M105's bright companion, NGC 3384. The sky was so bright, with a trace of haze, that fainter NGC 3389 was not visible.
I went back and through most of the rest of the Virgo cloud Messier galaxies. Working up from the south, I logged M61, M48, M60, M59, M58, M87, M86, M84, M88, M89, M90, M91, M98, M99, M100, and M85. The hindquarters of Leo were getting close to that tree, so I hunted down M65 and M66, next, and picked up NGC 3628, which was showing elongation.
Finally I decided to try M83. The nearest star to it that I could see was gamma Hydrae, but the star hop from there is not difficult. I was half expecting the big. low surface-brightness galaxy not to be visible, but there was no mistaking the diffuse glow at its charted position.
As I put the diminutive Newtonian to bed, I thought again that Stargazer Steve makes fine beginner telescopes.