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The other day, I looked through my old NZ$25 Optical Valley 7x50.
Out of the open window into the western sky. I was amazed how many stars I was able to see in the black satin - beyond that ever present light pollution in my Rostock suburb.
More stars than a 20 second tracked exposure with a 500/6.3 camera lens was able to see.
And the bino viewing experience is so much more direct and breathtaking...
with a surprising apparent blackness of the sky, illogically caused by that darn light pollution...
It was just beautiful.
And lately, while looking at nebula photos here on IIS, I noticed that I am beginning to prefer b/w versions over colour because my head can discern details better if it's not distracted by pink billowing clouds.
So the other day I thought, "Mhmm, with all this light pollution all around me and my changing preference for b/w, maybe binos are my way to go?"
[The next day, I read up on why LP is conquered by binos.]
Them 7x50 were quite shaky handheld so I grabbed my tripod, legs drawn all in, placed it on my belly while sitting in the comfy chair and imagined looking through those binos, now.
Yup, would work. Just need one of them iron sticks to mount the bino on the ball head.
But then… you know… 7x50 … really pretty experience but very limited.
With that comfy chair/tripod solution out of my window, I could easily handle bigger glasses…
And if I manage to cycle to the beach some nights… without that chair… I’d need diagonals to be comfy while viewing … or some other tricky mount that costs €250 or more…
Also… binos usually don’t come with filter threads … and I’d really like to try out the North American Nebula through binos with a UHC filter…
I remembered Clive Milne and his 16” or 20” newtonian bino scope.
Why not try a really small one? Say 70mm refractor which come with diagonals for comfortable viewing and can hold filters?
That’s my reasoning. I feel reasonably smart, now, too.
Because I couldn’t find pictures of DIY 70mm binoscopes on the web, only the big ones which aren’t portable at all and require much more DIY and material.
So what do you think?
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