seeker372011
06-01-2006, 11:03 PM
Last Friday..at about this time-I was up at Linden, skies were reasonably dark, the mossies were biting, the imaging gear was up and running and I could, in between clicking the remote for the camera, enjoy the sky with 11 x 60 binos
(I mainly enjoy visual observing with binos, my scopes are mainly for imaging..for example I travelled 60 kms to a dark site that night but didnt even have a single eyepiece with me that night! had two pairs of binos though)
Anyway there are some objects that everyone -well most everyone -agrees are better in binos than in a telescope.
A prime example is M45... superb in binos, just too big for most scopes (I know, I know in a RFT you can fit in the whole of this cluster, but I don't own an RFT and have never even looked through one).
Now this is the point of my post...just randomly scanning the sky, I came upon M46 and 47 and nearly fell off my chair. What a superb pair of objects and just perfect for binos--something you could never see in a telescope together. Havent actually seen this mentioned in any of the bino books-either Harringtons or Crossen's or anywhere else. Bino astronomy seems to be the neglected hobby.
So what do you reckon are the "bino best" objects?
As an aside , other objects I visually observed through binos on that night included:
M33,38,36,37,41,42, 78 LMC, NGC 2070, SMC , tuc 47, NGC 2232,2244, and the usual suspects in Carina, and Crux
as usual tried for the Helix, failed.(probably too low in the sky by the time it really got dark). Also tried the Crab, failed :(
one day.
My son who was with me and whose eyes are thirty years younger than I thought he could see the flame nebula, but I couldnt.
One of these days i will get around to processing the images I acquired on the night but it was ridiculously warm-and ridiculously noisy as a consequence so i dont hold too much hope for a half way decent outcome. But who cares?
It was incredibly pleasant to just sit back under the stars and enjoy the night sky. (A glass of red would have been even nicer but I had to drive unfortunately, so that wasnt to be)
(I mainly enjoy visual observing with binos, my scopes are mainly for imaging..for example I travelled 60 kms to a dark site that night but didnt even have a single eyepiece with me that night! had two pairs of binos though)
Anyway there are some objects that everyone -well most everyone -agrees are better in binos than in a telescope.
A prime example is M45... superb in binos, just too big for most scopes (I know, I know in a RFT you can fit in the whole of this cluster, but I don't own an RFT and have never even looked through one).
Now this is the point of my post...just randomly scanning the sky, I came upon M46 and 47 and nearly fell off my chair. What a superb pair of objects and just perfect for binos--something you could never see in a telescope together. Havent actually seen this mentioned in any of the bino books-either Harringtons or Crossen's or anywhere else. Bino astronomy seems to be the neglected hobby.
So what do you reckon are the "bino best" objects?
As an aside , other objects I visually observed through binos on that night included:
M33,38,36,37,41,42, 78 LMC, NGC 2070, SMC , tuc 47, NGC 2232,2244, and the usual suspects in Carina, and Crux
as usual tried for the Helix, failed.(probably too low in the sky by the time it really got dark). Also tried the Crab, failed :(
one day.
My son who was with me and whose eyes are thirty years younger than I thought he could see the flame nebula, but I couldnt.
One of these days i will get around to processing the images I acquired on the night but it was ridiculously warm-and ridiculously noisy as a consequence so i dont hold too much hope for a half way decent outcome. But who cares?
It was incredibly pleasant to just sit back under the stars and enjoy the night sky. (A glass of red would have been even nicer but I had to drive unfortunately, so that wasnt to be)