Saturday morning I awoke at around 4:30am. The sky here in this city of 30-40k with Chicago an hour to the East suffers from light pollution, but Sat. morning for whatever reason more stars were showing than usual and all seemed intensely bright.
I recently bought some Celestron Skymaster 15X70's from Amazon for the very reasonable price of $63 (no tax and free shipping). I also bought a $30 Walmart tripod. The views of the crescent moon were very pleasing.. the details were very sharp and the 3D image seemed much more natural. For example the flat lava fields had the curvature you would expect instead of just appearing flat
as in my refractor. The tripod is not that good and the binoculars do wobble for ~5-10s after adjustments.. but the long eye relief worked very well with my glasses and allowed me to avoid bumping the binoculars with my glasses.
Venus was so intense that it just appeared like a ball of light in both the binoculars and the refractor. I am guessing that a filter was needed to see it... it seemed just as bright as the moon.
The sky around the moon appeared slightly gray in color in the skymasters. I am guessing this is a difference that would look darker in better quality/more expensive binocs due to better coatings and or baffling.
Considering that I only spent about $95 for both the binoculars and the tripod, I was thrilled with the results that morning. My wife came out also was impressed by the performance of the binoculars while looking at the moon.
Doug
I recently bought some Celestron Skymaster 15X70's from Amazon for the very reasonable price of $63 (no tax and free shipping). I also bought a $30 Walmart tripod. The views of the crescent moon were very pleasing.. the details were very sharp and the 3D image seemed much more natural. For example the flat lava fields had the curvature you would expect instead of just appearing flat
as in my refractor. The tripod is not that good and the binoculars do wobble for ~5-10s after adjustments.. but the long eye relief worked very well with my glasses and allowed me to avoid bumping the binoculars with my glasses.
Venus was so intense that it just appeared like a ball of light in both the binoculars and the refractor. I am guessing that a filter was needed to see it... it seemed just as bright as the moon.
The sky around the moon appeared slightly gray in color in the skymasters. I am guessing this is a difference that would look darker in better quality/more expensive binocs due to better coatings and or baffling.
Considering that I only spent about $95 for both the binoculars and the tripod, I was thrilled with the results that morning. My wife came out also was impressed by the performance of the binoculars while looking at the moon.
Doug
