Last night observing Report...Kerry Astronomy Club

What were the large binoculars like?

really pleased with them Martin. I had read on CloudyNights that the image focus on these instruments drops off from about 60% of the way out from the centre of the field and the stars do appear out of focus towards the edge. Not a lot can be done about that unless anyone wanted to donate me a $17,500 pair of 25x150mm Fujinons!

deep sky objects are nice and the usual tourist spots of M42, etc. show up really well. The transparency wasn't that great where we were last night as I did see the NGC complex north of M42/M43 very obvious on Christmas Eve but barely at all yesterday evening. Sigh, I'll just have to do a bit of overtime to fatten the Fujinon fund

the mounting is a lot steadier now after I screwed the supplied threaded disk onto the tripod attachment rod (I'm sure there's a technical name for that bit).

the field of view is about 2.6 degrees and at first I thought I couldn't find M46/M47 because of the narrow field . . . turns out that both lenses were badly dewed up! A decent night will be needed to see how these binoculars perform up against the 20x60mm that I've had for about 15 years. M79 was barely there . . . again, because the atmosphere was laden with moisture. It should have been a cinch to spot.

a parallelogram mount is a must though because of the literal pain in the neck from trying to look higher than 50 degrees altitude.

ltr,

John

Thanks for the info John..i was thinking of getting binos in this size range. Do you reckon they would be good for observing bright comets?

hi Martin,

the 20x60mm have stood me in good stead over the years for the clutch of comets that have swung by the inner Solar System. Ikeya-Zhang, Austin, and a host of those LINEAR's that fragmented and brightened unexpectedly were all very nice . . . not forgetting Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp of course.

the 20x60mm were even good enough to show a definite "shape" to Encke on it's last return. The larger objectives of the 100mm will almost certainly pull in the fainter comets. Often it's the skill of the observer as a great deal of patience is needed to tease any sort of detail out of "faint fuzzies" (comets, DSOs, etc.).

I think giant binoculars will stand you in good stead for open clusters and other extended objects. An example was NGC 2360 in CMa which I saw on Sunday night for the first time. A beautiful cluster in the 22x100mm and I was wondering how I missed it before. That said, reading the various observing handbooks on the bookshelf later revealed conflicting accounts of how the cluster would appear. One claimed that binoculars would not show it ("Observer's Sky Atlas" - probably pre-giant binos) while a couple of others only gave it a cursory mention.

ltr,

John

Thanks John..i will take that onboard.

One of the other highlights of the night has to have been a visit from the Local Garda, approaching with headlights on full.... “What are them Yokes there Lads, There not rocket launchers or anything”.

"Nah they are for spotting uboats..."