Magnification & objects visible

[Arif]

Hi all!

New here. Stumbled across a most erudite forum member (Carlos_dfc) after a Google search, and hence found this forum!

I'm at the point of re-igniting my fascination with the stars and celestial objects, artefacts and other skyward visible phenomena.

Carlos' contributions have comprised a crash-course for me, hopefully preventing any too-silly, inane or puerile questions. However:

1) I'm definitely decided on binoculars - like the 'observation' range as found at warehouseexpress (no link, in case breach of rules), at about the £800 price-point.

2) Can I request a definitive, concise visual guide as to what can be seen at which powers/magnification? For example, a forum member here under the name of Nytecam has a brilliant avatar image - can that be seen like that with a pair of 20x100 binoculars?

3) Looking at the warehouse express range again - how do Opticron compare with Helios? I'm all for paying for a name if it stands for substance. I'm currently veering towards a Helios ('Quantum 4', from memory).

4) Again on the same site - 'CCD' chips. Are these the solution to being able to get photographs out of a pair of binoculars? I know that if photography is that important, then I should get a telescope - but what are the options with binoculars please? I'm a Canon film-camera user.


Thanks in advance for your help here, and for your time and attentions for my query.


Arif

[nytecam]

2) Can I request a definitive, concise visual guide as to what can be seen at which powers/magnification? For example, a forum member here under the name of Nytecam has a brilliant avatar image - can that be seen like that with a pair of 20x100 binoculars?

Hi and welcome to WAB astronomy forum

I'm sure Carlos will answer your queries in due course. However to the query directed at me [Nytecam] my avatar is composed of the very best images taken through my observatory based telescope and even I didn't see that quality eyeballing through its 30cm aperture scope No way, unfortunately, will you see that detail through bins however expensive.

I appreciate some WAB forum members spend enormous sums on bins and spotting scopes but the bins [as quote] at £800 would a gross let-down for astronomy. For that money you could buy a top Meade or Celestron 15-20cm SCT telescope that would last a lifetime. I'd suggest, for starters, <£20 bins from Lidls but good luck in your long term quest

[Arif]

Nytecam - thank you for your helpful response!

Your take on observation binoculars and what the same money could buy in the form of a telescope has given me pause for thought!

My initial reasoning was based on various researches on various astronomy sites -how 'both eyes are better'; the brain has less processing to do, as it were, etc.

So here's the silly question - I anticipate wanting to spend a fair bit of time at the instrument, and keeping one eye closed throughout this time I'm imagining would make the 'fatigue threshold' much shorter. Is this not the case? Do people use eye patches ever?

And I'm (perhaps over-idealistically) preferring the idea of using the instrument as-is, and viewing the objects directly - rather than on a laptop next to me - because I imagine many would avoid fatigue via a camera set-up...UNLESS - it's possible for a telescope to produce lovely, clean, real-time images on a decent computer monitor?

My preference for viewing directly is based on the part of me that still holds on to film photography. With the camera and say a meaningful scene, I know that the negative I'm holding years later, was actually there with me at the time, was there during that moment, and was directly and physically altered by that scene - literally 'captured' the scene. Same with direct-view - it's just nice knowing that the thing I'm seeing is because light from it has passed billions (?) of miles, and right into my eye!

Look forward to your further help sir,


Arif

[nytecam]

Arif - most folk use both eyes to observe absolutely everything - it's automatic and gives instant gratification. A single telescope eyepiece can be swapped for a bino eyepiece devise - curiously two eyes don't see more but it is more relaxing. I would caution that the eye is relatively insensitive at night and unfortunately faint fuzzies [=galaxies etc] won't look like the pics in books/ internet which have camera exposures running into minutes or hours. But even I enjoy instant gratification - observing the sun most clear morning through my tiny h-alpha scope for a whole 90seconds and taking it all in

There is, of course, no real 3D effect with astro targets as they are too far away for parallax to be involved.

The Meade LS may appeal - the first scope that you just switch-on and wait a few minutes whilst it self-aligns via built-in GPS and sky-camera. It can then go on a guided sky tour aiming at each object in turn and telling [via built-in speaker] all about it with an american accent!