Zaid's mount broke in transport, so not to make his trip wasted I invited him to use my NV and mirror mount, which he gladly did, sharing views with Emma.
I made a list of small scope / binocular targets, but surprisingly many of them seemed too small or faint to use even a 4-inch. I liked the Binotron with the power & filter switches: all the observing controls are at one's fingertips and it's convenient. On the other hand, the FOV is significantly reduced vs. single eyepiece, and it's very long and heavy, causing balance problems. I still prefer the Binovue but one has to change eyepieces, and there's no diopter. I think I'll use the Binovue for solar when I rarely change eyepieces, and I don't really need a full disk view, and use the Binotron for lunar, planetary, and general deep sky. For deep sky the views are dimmer, which would limit it to bright objects only.
I observed quite a lot and quickly, so my notes are rather poor. I observed all of these before so I was mainly just thinking about what could be seen in the set-up. Much dimmer in 4-inch visually than I have been used to -- I couldn't even detect N6888! Many open clusters which one can take in just a few seconds, as long as it takes to count stars.
NP101 with Binotron, OIII & NBP
M22: Well resolved, took all powers well but seeing not good to the horizon
M21: Weak scatter of ~12 stars
Lagoon: The open cluster is much more prominent than the nebula, which is a weak streaked arc. I do see crenelations of the dark nebula pretty well
N6544: Faint, irregularly round, hazily resolved with medium power
N6618: Swan Nebula: very weak compared to NV, relatively bright swan shape and weak mottled halo forming the omega; filters help a little.
N6624: Faint and small but noticed immediately as a globular cluster, bright round center surrounded by a haze of stars.
N6626: Bright central region, round haze of stars around it.
IC4715: Wonderful dusting of stars with faint dusty clouds
N6638: Small faint, round, bright center, puff of a halo
N6171: Very faint unresolved cloud
M12: Mostly unresolved stars with a sense of spikes or trails of stars coming out of the slightly brighter center.
M10: Brighter than M12, especially in the middle, more compact.
N6266: Bright, pretty well resolved, round and fairly large.
N6294: Faint, rather small cloud, not resolved.
N6284: Very faint, bright stellar core, faint cloud surrounding
N6293: Faint, small, round
N6649: Very faint loose cluster off the edge of a bright star
N6664: Also near a bright star but more separated.
N6709: Triangular OC
N6755: Faint and small
N6712: Faint, round, fairly large
N6934: Small, fairly bright, near a double star
N6866: Barely separated from the very rich field.
N6888: Did not detect! Disappointed.
M29: Mini butterfly, only ~10 stars
IC 10: Vaguest of arms, loose track of them, can't quite pull them together to see as a galaxy. Pretty large, best seen medium power to darken the sky, I do see a round core with small slightly brighter core a bit disjointed from the arms.
N147: Faint, elongated, seen right away, medium power
N185: Very extremely faint, small, more of a contrast change in the sky, medium power.
N225: Not well separated form rich field.
N281: can see dark nebula crennelations in a milky nebulous field.
N436: Chevron shaped OC, faint stars
Tr 3: Loose, shaped like a balloon with a group of stars in a circle and a set trailing off in a curved line.
N654: Pretty red star with a sprinkle of faint stars.
N663: Fairly bright, makes a loop of stars.
N659: Small faint group, averted vision reveals more stars in the cluster
N896: Small faint wedge of faint stars bent around a moderately brighter star
St2: Large group, does not quite fit the lowest power field, a loose but rich cloud of nearly same magnitude white stars.
N957: Very faint, small cluster, elongated, with a red star intermingled.
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