About a dozen of us were out star gazing at a local state park last night (Aug 3rd, '00). One of the observers was a 17 year old student with his 6" Celestron achromat. This refractor and the student were doing a fine job finding deep sky objects.
A friend's 12 year old daughter was working her way through Herschel 400 list. A few of us set up near by, including the young man with the 6" Celestron, were having fun trying to keep up with her. She was setting a blistering pace. She stared using her 10" f/4.5 Dob and later talked her Dad into switching scopes with her. The rest of the night she had a ball using his Obsession 18 (no DSCs). Her father has logged a couple of thousand Herschel objects and was confirming her finds using the 10" Dob. I was lagging behind, but my excuse, I only had an Obsession 15. ;-)
I had my 6" AP the truck but decided to use my Dob. It didn't look like the seeing would be very good and it turned out the seeing wasn't as good as usual, so for me it was a deep sky rather than a planetary night .
The 6" Celestron achromat was giving fine views of the DSOs. The young man piloting the Celestron was keeping up well with the Obsession 18 (the Herschel 400 is a list of relatively bright DSOs). It was a fun night and this is just a reminder that people shouldn't discount a modest achromat for star gazing.
The 12 year old young lady using the Obsession 18 was recently featured on the cover of Sky & Telescope magazine with her 10" Dob.