by Jay Freeman
I set up at the Montebello Open Space Area main parking lot, in the hills south of Palo Alto, California, on March 13 and again on March 14, 2001. On the first night, I brought "Refractor Fred", my 70 mm f/8 Vixen fluorite, whose name stems from its appearance, which is much more pedestrian than its 55 mm day-glow cousin, "Refractor Red". I have been doing a Herschel 400 survey with the 70 mm, and am about a third of the way through. It is much easier with this instrument than with the 55 mm, though there are a few planetary nebulae which require substantial magnification and a steady hand at the controls of the altazimuth mount, to be exposed convincingly as non-stellar.
The pleasures of using such a small instrument are nontheless convincing. On an Orion/Vixen altazimuth mount, the 70 mm refractor is a one-hand carry, and set-up time is less than a minute. Some times I take an instrument such as this to a star party as an auxiliary to a larger telescope, for use after I have gotten tired and put the "big iron" away. Furthermore, perhaps half the Herschel 400 objects are sufficiently bright or large to be something beyond mere smudges with 70 mm aperture. Thus the little telescope provides more than the mere pleasure of detection for the serious deep-sky weasel.
On the second night, I brought a much larger telescope, Gillian, my Astro-Physics 10-inch Maksutov-Cassegrain. This instrument is not quite as capable a deep-sky performer as Harvey, my Celestron 14, but can show essentially all the galaxies in Millennium Star Atlas when the sky is dark and the objects are well placed. Most of what I did that evening was that kind of work, so there isn't much to say about it. At the limit of Millennium, Gillian shows most everything as lumpy darkness at best.
Yet the seeing was good enough to tempt me to more interesting targets. At 464x (8 mm Brandon) I had occasional glimpses of Sirius B and Procyon B. Position angles and separations were in excellent agreement with published ephemerides, which helped, because seeing was only good enough to see the dim round spots of these faint companions occasionally. It would have taken a lot more time to find them if I hadn't known exactly where to look. I spent a while scrutinizing areas at comparable distances out from the primaries, but at the wrong position angles, to see whether I saw any similar "companions" at those locations. I did not, which is moderately convincing that the observations were real, and not just mere seeing jitter masquerading as close companions. I expect Gillian would blow Sirius and Procyon wide open in excellent seeing, but excellent seeing is rare during the season when they culminate at reasonable hours.