Last April, on an exceptionally transparent night, I got M4 for the first time in the telescopic field of view (I live at latitude +59°52'). The globular cluster's outskirts was easily resolved into 11 magnitude stars (and fainter?) with my 10-inch at 48x. Its famous bar of stars at the core was obvious at 125x. M4 was at the altitude of 3°.2 (including standard refraction). That night, Antares (altitude 3°) shone brightly naked eye which was an indication of the night's quality.

Last August, I got to see the nebulosity in M8 (not only the star cluster NGC6530) with 18x50 IS binoculars. The altitude of M8 was 3°.6 while the sun was 12°.9 down. That night, I observed all the southern summer Messier's that are theoretically visible from here. Last year, I saw all the (theoretically visible) 102 Messier's with binoculars in two nights, well in "1 1/2 nights", because all the summer Messier objects were seen before the end of astronomical twilight.

/Timo Karhula