Thanks guys i would love to share the views through these, i am aiming for the cosmos star party for starters. I have an observing report with these from tonight, i am like a kid in a sweet shop!
Visual update Saturday march 25. Well tonight my night sky was steady and clear with some passing high cirrus cloud but good clear skies in between. I was weather watching all day with great hope that i would finally get out - and i did smile.gif
I set up my rig and let the bino's cool down a little over the next 20 minutes, my sky transparency was very good! I really wanted to see what these 120ed bino's could do and boy did they not disappoint !! I wanted to look at a variety of objects such as nebulae, star clusters and galaxies using just my pair of 18mm standard 65 Afov eyepieces from APM.
My 1st target was the Orion nebula, and just like last week it was SO bright ! With all that dusty mottled details around the trapezium which was easily resolved, these were truly sparking diamonds in the sky.
I them moved to the crab nebula M1. At magnitude 8.4 this easily stood out against the dark background sky glowing relatively brightly with a little central condensation, very gray in appearance with a little mottled detail using averted vision. I'm sure that with a little more magnification this would look even a little better.
I then moved to cancer and set my sights on M67. This was a really pleasing view, with glistening condensed stars nearly the size of a full moon. M44 was even better, just WOW. The 120's delivered an outstanding view with so many bright beacons of clear and still light covering my entire field of view, wonderful. It was then i decided on a challenge, i set the 120's on a galaxy in lynx called NGC2683. This was a beautiful almost edge on spiral galaxy at magnitude 9.1 showing a ghostly glow of an island universe 31million light years away. It seemed a very lonely galaxy with just a few dim stars for company, but a really pleasing view.
Then on to M81 & M82 in Ursa major, wow just wow!! M81 clearly showed a little spiral detail with a very bright central core at magnitude 6.8. I was willing on a supernova to appear before my eyes these bino's simply excelled at showing this galaxy. As for its companion M82 just as good with lots of clearly seen mottled detail though a little dimmer at magnitude 8. I got that 3d sense just looking at this pair - what a view.
I then looked at at M51 the whirlpool galaxy, i can truly say this was outstanding even at just x37. Spiral structure was easily seen in my bortle 3 skies with a definite central bright core. NGC5195 was a great companion shiny with a little less intensity and size but both were majestic. I scanned the area close by and found NGC3077 close by, even at magnitude 9.9 this galaxy was easily seen. More of a challenge was NGC2976 shining at magnitude 10.1, was just a gray patch clearly seen against a darker background with little detail.
I wanted to see the leo triplet also, in short these were also outstanding although NGC3628 was a dim streak across the sky. Both M66 and M65 were quite bright with a little detail seen in terms of spiral structure. I can resist going back to these over and over again !
I also wanted to see just how the 120's performed for colour. I set my sights on mu Cephei the garnet star, what a beautiful orange colour, so intense and crisp. No flaring of false colour here - simply outstanding. I briefly randomly scanned nearby and found the variable star V619 Cephei at magnitude 6.5 or so what a beautiful orange star, with some any contrasting a blue stars in the field of view, this reinforced my view that these bino's are superb for rendering colour!
I can say that this is the best nights viewing that i have had in some time, i am very happy with my new purchase. The quality of these bino's are quite frankly outstanding. I can only imagine what these will deliver when I save for some more eyepieces, probably 13mm or 9mm. I will definitely be keeping these for some time and hope to have some great views with these for many years ahead!
Keith..
  