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Old 19-10-2005, 10:03 PM
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seeker372011 (Narayan)
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seeker372011 is offline
 
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Sydney
Posts: 3,663
Hi jmb and welcome to the forum


getting binos and learning the sky is the way to go!!


The choice of which binos to buy is dependent upon many factors, one being your age and an other being whether you are going to hand hold your binos or mount it somehow (mounting adds significantly to cost, also reduces the grab and go appeal, but you get at least 0.5 to almost 1 magnitude more from your binos)

Many years ago the standard recommendation used to be 7 x50s. More and more however I see 10 x 50s recommended for hand held astronomical use.

I have a 7 x50, a 11 x 70 and 20 x 80 myself.

The 11 x70 -for me- is the best-has the greatest eye relief, can be hand held reasonably comfortably. Works well in a mirror mount and costs only around $119 from AOE or Andrews.

Bear in mind that exit pupil-the aperture divided by the magnification is an important consideration. If you are over 40 you are theoretically unlikely to get any benefit from exit pupils greater than 4 or 5. If you are younger, then maximising the exit pupil to say 7 could be beneficial.

Whatever you do, since binos do go out of collimation-try before you buy... make sure there is no double vision-nothing is guaranteed to give you a headache faster than badly collimated binos.

hope this helps.

ask away if you have any further questions.
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