Had a great session with my 72mm Megrez last night. I bought this scope for wide field imaging and never really considered it for visual (my C8 is the usual choice for visual), but based on last night’s experience I will be doing a lot more grab and go observing in the future with this little great scope.

Being short of time last night I carried the scope plus mount (a SkyTee2 altaz) to an observing site round the back of my house, which is basically a dentist’s car park in the middle of a small town – not the darkest of sites so I wasn’t expecting too much. Also I didn’t have any kind of star atlas so had to rely on memory which would restrict me to the better known objects.

With a 10mm Baader Hyperion eyepiece in place, I was getting 43x magnification and a FOV of 1.57 degrees.

I decided to start with a star so I could align the red dot finder. I chose Mizar in Ursa Major and was met with the sight of Mizar A and B easily resolved at 14" separation and Alcor in the same field of view. The double looked really pretty with perfectly pinpoint stars side by side in a really dark background, quite stunning actually for such a simple object.

Hmm this was looking promising, so how about another double? Alberio is the classic coloured double so a quick slew round and there was the burning orange of Alberio A easily separated from Alberio B by 35”. Really beautiful, but in many ways I preferred Mizar as a double because the closeness of the stars seemed so pleasing to the eye.

OK I am liking this little refractor for doubles, what about faint fuzzies? I trained the red dot finder on the area of M81 and M82 on Ursa Major, expecting a lengthy period of scanning to find some faint smudges, looked through the eyepiece and bang, there were both galaxies in the field of view, very distinct with easily discernible shapes. I suspect I could have seen some detail if I had more time and had I not had a couple of street lights nearby ruining my dark adaption. But far better than I was expecting.

Right, let’s try another faintish fuzzy, the Dumbell Nebula M27. This was easily found and pretty impressive too, a ghostly blob of light hanging in the darkness, but with a discernible shape. Not sure what shape I would have given it if I did not already know it was dumbbell shaped, but it was definitely circular with dark areas.

On to the great globular M13 in Hercules. This was slightly less impressive and I think is where aperture is king - the view of M13 through my C8 is truly breath taking. With the 72mm I could just about resolve the outer stars using averted vision and with a darker sky and more power I could probably have seen a lot more.

Finally onto M52, an open cluster in Cassiopeia. Both M52 and the bubble nebula were clearly visible in the field of view. M52 was a lovely small and compact cluster with numerous stars with little variation in brightness. Very pretty indeed. The bubble nebula was a hazy blur, but at the time I didn’t know what I was looking at, assuming it was a very faint cluster, therefore I did not try too hard to see any detail – next time I will have a closer look. A quick look at the double cluster in Perseus confirmed the Megrez's superb ability on open clusters.

I finished with a 10 minute scan of the milky way. I could have scanned all night and with such a wide field of view it is easy to stumble upon interesting objects, and I bumped into the Dumbell Nebula for a second time.

It’s clear to me now why people love refractors and why small refractors are ‘great grab and go’ instruments, especially for double stars, open clusters and brighter galaxies and nebulae. I’ll be out there again tonight if skies permit as there was loads more I wanted to see!