Hi there
The jolly fat man, no, not Brian Cowan, I said jolly, Santy, brought me a pair of Pentax PCF WPII 10x50 binos. I got them out tonight for a thorough workout, alongside my 25x100s and boy am I impressed.
They are a heavy pair of binos, solid construction, rubber armoured and nitrogen filled to prevent fogging. Both the eyepiece focus and the centre focus as lockable ensuring that thry will not lose their focus. The eyecups move to three different heights to accomodate thos who wear glasses and those who don't. The light tranmission of the binos is outstanding, images are crisp and bright, stars remain as stars until about 90% out where they grow a little soft. A few small niggles is the rainguard over the eyepieces is loose, as are the lens caps, finally there is no shoulder strap for the bag, so if out on a walk it will mean carrying the bag, or hanging the binos around my neck and risk losing the covers. Small complaints, but sometimes it's the little things.
I began with the usual suspects, M45 was dazzling, The Double Cluster a beautiful pair of star filled objects, the "eyes" of NGC 869 looked back at me,the starfields of Perseus and Cassiopeia were breathtaking. M42 showed lovely nebulosity with three Trapezium stars seen. All three Messiers in Auriga were simple, M35 showed four main stars with the remainder a nebulous region in the background. M33 was easy.
Then I decided to give them a sterner workout. M74 was a patch of nebulosity when seen with A.V. M1 was a small fuzzy region. M77 was a stellar galaxy. M78 was so obvious that I was astounded that I could see it directly. NGC 2403 in Camelopardalis was a large nebular galaxy.
When compared with the larger binos I believe that the Pentax's will get a greater amount of sky time, the views were so much brighter, the stars crisper and the greater field of view meant the belt stars of Orion easily fit into the field of view.
With Orion rising, Monoceros and Canis Major just waiting, it promises to be a great winter and then there is the summer Milky Way to look forward to.
Pentax also make a PCF WPII 20x60 pair and I am seriously tempted to purchase a pair and scrap my 15x70s.
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better programs, and the universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the universe is winning.
Rich Cook
  