Aside From Coins, Do You Have Any Other Hobbies?

These are only 7x50, so they should be fairly steady for the average person to hold by hand and stargaze. I plan to either lay back on my backyard table as I'm staring up, or recline back in a chair. Either method should add extra stability.

Eventually I'd love to get 15x70 binoculars too and set them up on a camera mount for when I want extra magnification and still don't want to drag out the telescope. Binoculars of that size and weight would definitely require a mount, but would still be much lighter, faster, and easier to set up and cool down than a dobsonian telescope.

I can see now why binoculars are so popular with backyard astronomers. I shied away from the idea of binoculars because telescopes obviously allow for more precise detailed viewing. However, after relying only on the telescope, I can finally see why binoculars really make a lot of sense and are still very popular. With 10 minutes to drag out and set the telescope, and 20 minutes of cool down time before I can view anything (30 minutes for the complete setup), and another 10 minutes of breakdown time, I'm finding binoculars (and not the telescope) are the way to go for weeknights. With only one or one and a half hours to view the sky before I have to go to sleep, cutting 40 minutes of setup time allows me to hunt multiple targets every night. Weekends though, the telescope is king as I have all the time in the world to go through the setup routine.

 

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Here is something for you guys to ponder over. The 7x50 binos I just purchased will allow someone a far better view than Galileo's original telescope with 8x magnification, poor quality handpolished glass lenses with no coating whatsoever, and a rather abysmal .67 inch aperture. Yet Galileo Galilei somehow managed to discover the first heavenly bodies anyone had discovered since antiquity with all that limitation...the 4 Galilean moons of Jupiter.

His much refined second scope allowed him 14x magnification with a 1 inch aperture, and still terrible handpolished optics with no coating (the optical aberrations must have been terrible). Yet he was able to study the phases of Venus with it somehow, and prove that Venus revolved around the Sun, which means the Earth must also revolve around the sun

His best telescope had x30 magnification, but the small aperture and horrible aberrations were still serious limitations.Yet with that he was able to tell Saturn had something around it, but couldn't quite make out that it was a ring system. But think about how amazing it was that he accomplished all of that despite a small aperture, and primitive lenses with chromatic and spherical aberration so bad that even a $50 toy telescope today would render clearer images.

If that doesn't amaze you, consider this....Galileo's best telescope would have been vastly inferior to this 20x80 set of astronomy binoculars. Unlike Galileo's telescopes, you can actually discern the rings of Saturn with this enough to tell it is a ring system. Let that sink in for a second...poor old Galileo would have killed to have the clarity and quality a $120 set of astronomy binoculars can achieve today, but he was still able to learn so much about the heavens with what he had to work with.

Incidentally, this will probably be my second set of binos. I'll probably buy them next month. I haven't even received my first and I'm already drooling over these. LOL.

 

Sounds like I need to go buy a telescope.

 

Nice shots!

 

Yes, Space/astronomy coins.

 

Having started with a telescope, I say give binoculars a try first. For around $120 you can get this pair of 15x70, a tripod, and the tripod adapter to connect the binoculars (see frequently bought together option at the bottom of picture). A lot cheaper than a decent telescope, and there are a lot of objects to see at 15x magnification.

A decent budget dobsonian telescope will cost you around $200 minimum (anything below that price range is utter garbage). Once you make the necesary upgrades to make it useable (ie. a better star finder than the garbage it comes with, a 2x barlow eyepiece, etc.) you'd already be north of $325 just to have a basic decently equiped budget telescope you can actually enjoy and do proper astronomy with.

With these binoculars and the stand you'd be in business for 1/3 the price. You won't be seeing the rings of Saturn with this probably, but you can see some planetary moons and see the planets as small round colorful objects rather than stars, plus you will get great views of nearby galaxies, star clusters, the constellations, etc.

 

Thank you very much for all the great advice. Your son is around the same age as 3 of my Grandkids. This would be a wonderful time for them all! Best, Brian

 

Awesome.. I appreciate the info. I got a pair heading my way. Thanks @Sallent!

 

Great list....I indulged in most of those but retained the most frequently mentioned one you dropped from your list

 

WOW!
"Curtisimo da Vinci"!!

 

Waiting for your pics!!!
https://www.theguardian.com/science...r-of-the-year-2017-winners-in-pictures#img-13

 

I am sorry. This was the photograph:

 

That pic is from my CELL PHONE!

 

LOL ...surely not... (but I'll bet that in ten years one of your grandchildren can do that with a phone!) .......

 

Last night I was stargazing until 5:00AM. Got excellent views of Saturn and it's rings with my 4.5 dobsonian telescope, got to observe Orion and Beetlejuice using my 24x widefield lense...and Beetlejuice was giving off almost a golden color last night (that star is always changing intensity so you never know what it will look like a few weeks from now, as it is close to going Supernova). Got to also target Vega and Sirius. I don't do stellar photography as frankly no picture of mine will ever outdo what you can see courtesy of NASA , but trust me when I say the views were amazing. It's a shame that Jupiter was below the horizon, because with no moon around the views were great.

 

Thankfully 20 miles NW of my house we have a public observatory that belongs to the South Florida Amateur Astronomers Association, with a dozen telescopes ranging from a respectable 6 inch to 16 inch monsters, plus Saturdays is open day for non-members and everyone is welcome to bring binoculars and telescopes to share in on the fun with others. I just became a member, so Ill be there a couple of times a month to look through the big scopes, and being towards the everglades ensures fairly dark skies...so worth it either through the big scopes or even through smaller scopes or binoculars people tend to drag there on the weekends.

Im going to sign up for classes and activities to see if eventually I can get qualified and receive authorization to open the observatory and use the bigger scopes on my own without supervision. That would be neat.

 

My son testing out the 7x50 binoculars. They arrived today. These are the perfect astronomy binos, with perfect magnification vs. field of view ratio for stargazing, and large apertures for plenty of light gathering in the darkness...yet not ridiculously heavy to hold by hand.


Heck, my son had a blast with these for a good 15 minutes, and I got to sight see a Douglas DC-3 that flies near my house once in a while on the way to a small private airfield 5 miles away. It looked so close and so nicely 3-D I almost felt like I could reach out and touch it. Can't wait to use these tonight to help me hunt potential sky targets to aim my telescope at.

Oh, and last night I used Sirius and Vega to align my new laser finder on the telescope. Finally got the right base mount and got it set up securely on the telescope. It is literally point and view now. Aim the laser at a star, planet, or cluster, and see it perfectly centered on the eyepiece just like that. Word of caution, use lasers responsibility. Never have a laser on and pointing at the sky if you hear or see an airplane overhead.



My only regret now is that I only got a 4.5 inch telescope. I feel so inadequate. I need to upgrade to at least 6 inches by next year, and leave this one as a portable and backup telescope. Come to think of it, 8 inches might be the perfect size. We'll see.

When it comes to astronomy, I've discovered size does matter...though it's not so much the length as the girth (ie. aperture size). Here, Adams Sandler figured it all out:

 

I just put one of these together earlier today and have it shipping in two days. I wavered between a 14 inch truss, 12 inch truss, 12 inch solid tube or a 10 inch solid tube Dob. I have suburban skies, in the North East. The weight on the first 3 were a bit much so I went with the 10 inch solid tube.

I gave up on astrophotography decades ago and don't plan on doing it with this scope. I even decided against the GoTo mount with tracking, in order to cut weight. The money saved from not getting the GoTO allowed me to get a binoviewer for double the fun.

That is a nice SCT you have. I almost bought an Edge HD but in the end I went with a simple Dob.

I will probably have only a handful of great nights a year, but that is what makes them special.

Orion Build-A-Scope 10" Classic Dobsonian Telescope

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