Monday, April 1, 2013

Binoculars, or possibly a Telescope? Which should I acquire first?

By Joseph Swinden


Any time you visualize an astronomer it tends to envision the image of a person which has a telescope. The will to acquire a telescope and unlock all of the glory of the heavens and its wonders is powerful to start with. But perhaps you should consider getting yourself binoculars first. Here's why.

Sensible binoculars will assist you to look at the craters on the moon, the moons about Jupiter and in some cases make out some galaxies (which include M81 and M82 in the constellation Ursa Major).

They have to have a great field of view to let you better look at the constellations and surf along the stars on the Milky Way. Unlike lots of telescopes that invert the image of the night sky, binoculars are orientated just as you in reality see the sky, which helps to look for things of great interest. Since if you know the thing is down and left coming from a star you only need to point the binoculars down and left. By using a telescope you must remember that left is right and up is down. So, put a reclining chair inside your garden, lie down and revel in learning the night time sky.

Binoculars for astronomy must be lightweight while having an adapter to fit them to a tripod. The reason is, just one of the difficulties with binoculars is that if they are too large then you will begin to shake when keeping them up to the night sky for any length of time. This is certainly made worse by getting binoculars, which has a higher magnification because shaking is amplified too.

A good, extremely versatile pair of binoculars would normally have about a magnification of 7-10 times and lens apertures of approximately 35-50 mm (shortened as 10x50 for 10x magnification and 50mm aperture).

So which should you buy first, binoculars or even a telescope? Binoculars really are a less costly option and make learning the night sky an even more pleasurable experience. Sure you won't have the ability to delve straight to viewing those challenging faint deep space objects but if you don't recognize the constellations then you wouldn't locate them anyway. Of course, if you bought a Goto telescope then you definitely wouldn't need to learn the constellations, because the telescope will point you straight at the deep space target, but you'll lose out on the pleasure that having the ability to navigate the evening sky and all of its wonders brings to you when you carry on and learn astronomy.




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