by Jon Ruyle
I observed from my back yard and front porch last night. (My tiny back yard faces West and the porch faces East. I can never see more than about half the sky at once).
A friend was over, so I showed him some bright objects through the 4". Jupiter, Saturn, the moon. (He is not an observer, but as soon as he looked at Jupiter he said "Wow- there's a lot of contrast". Not at all the type of comment I would have expected from a non-telescope type looking at Jupiter.)
The seeing was so-so; the Cassini Division was easy to see at the edges but I couldn't follow it all the way around the planet (on a bad night there are moments when I can't make out the rings of Saturn at all, believe it or not). He liked the moon the best.
We then went on to some deep sky stuff, starting with M42. He said "I think I see a fuzz in the center of the field". When I looked, the general shape of the nebula was obvious with direct vision and full of detail at the center. The extent increased with averted vision. I then showed him the double cluster. He said something like "There might to be two areas of slight increase in star density. Or maybe I am imagining it".
Geez. Well there was no impressing this guy but I was having a great time so I continued to torture him. We looked at some more bright clusters- the Auriga clusters, M35 and that small close by one (can't remember the NGC number), then M41. He said he saw some chromatic aberration in M41 but he reasoned "it is unlikely that it is the scope, though, because it is uniform across the field". I told him I thought it was refraction from the atmosphere (I am pretty sure that's right). This prompted a discussion of chromatic aberration in eyeglass, and he explained to me why there is none in contact lenses (though I am not sure I understood fully).
Then my wife called and said she was on her way home from work, so I had to put the 4" away and make dinner! After dinner, I snuck away to the porch upstairs and looked at the other half of the sky with the C8. I had doubled my aperture and Leo was prominent in the sky, so decided to look at galaxies. I got great views of NGC2903, the NGC3190 group (I was able to see 3190 and 3193 easily at 59x but the view deteriorated at 100x), and the Ms. The best part, though, was seeing some dimmer galaxies I didn't expect to be able to see from home. I wish I had my notes with me now or remembered the NGC numbers, but my stupid brain fails me.
Not as good as Dino, but not too bad either.