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Old February 15th 07, 06:20 AM posted to sci.astro.satellites.visual-observe
Skywise
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Default Help! New to this..

"Tulpa" wrote in
oups.com:

Hi there, I am looking for advice. What specifications would
anyone
suggest for Binoculars capable of making sense of the stars? I would
like to see more than I can with the naked eye... I live in the North
of England. Not good conditions. I can't even make out the Milky Way!
Thanks for reading.


Bigger aperture. That is, bigger objective lenses gather more light
that is then sent to your eyes which allow you to see fainter stars.
The downside of this is that the bigger the objectives, the heavier
the binos get, and your arms will get tired holding them. There are
bino mounts available, though.

Clear coatings. Do not fall for those "ruby red" binos. That red
reflection is light that is NOT going through the binoculars, and
thus, not to your eyes. Ideally, the anti-reflection coating should
be invisible. The idea of the coating is to make light go through
the binos and prevent light from reflecting off the lenses.

Don't go for too much magnification. Since you're likely to be
holding the binos by hand, the higher the magnification, the more
pronounced your hand shaking will be in the images you view. Also,
lower magnification let's you see more of the sky (wider field of
view) and will also make the images brighter. Most astronomy is
done at low powers. In case you didn't know, if you could see the
entire Andromeda galaxy in the sky, it would appear bigger than
two full Moons.

Hope that helps.

Brian
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