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It's encouraging to remember that Messier used a 75mm refractor. That was in the days before Fraunhofer doublets and even Plössl-design eyepieces. Most eyepieces were Ramsdens or Huygens, with field views not much wider than looking through a table straw. The crispness and colour accuracy we take for granted didn't exist, though the seeing conditions with v.little if any light pollution made Paris into something of a dark site with canyon horizons from nearby dark houses. When Abbe LaCaille came to the Cape of Good Hope (now Cape Town) S Africa, he cataloged over 10,000 star positions and quite a lot of bright clusters using a 20x telescope with a 12.5mm objective. That's only about three times the light-gathering power of our eyes. (And Cape weather would drive any astronomer to despair.) My first scope was a 20x 40mm 'spotting scope' used for rifle target practice, with maybe a 30° field. Even hand-held, this scope served me for many years and I still use it now and then for nostalgia reasons. It resolves some stars in 47 Tuc and 6752 in Pavo (but just a glow in O Cen), and has no trouble with M4, M80—and this hand-held using a fence post for a prop. No matter what kind of scope you have, it's what you do with it that counts. For me, useful astronomy comes from note-keeping and taking a lot of time on each object waiting for its specialness to shine through. Sort of like girlfriends and good food, but cheaper than both.
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