StarSapling

I haven't read any reviews of the Celestron 20x80's, but here is my personal experience with them: I've had a pair of Zhumell 20x80's for several years and love them. They only cost me around $110 and perform perfectly. On a good night, I can split the trapezium with them! A few years back, I thought that I had damaged them using the projection method to observe the Sun, so I thought I would get another pair. Back in the 80's, I always had good experiences with Celestron products, so decided to purchase a pair of their 20x80's. Boy, was I disappointed! Their performance was no where near as good as with my cheap Zhumell 20x80's, even in their damaged state! I was going to give the Celestron 20x80's to a newbie to the hobby, but thought better of it, as the abysmal performance of these Celestron bins might discourage their pursuit of the hobby, so they've just been sitting in my storage shed collecting dust for the last five years. But, then again, there are many people out there who think they are fantastic bins. Maybe I just got a bad pair, but considering the sub-standard quality of every Celestron product I've purchased over the last six years, I think it is more a case of Celestron's lack of concern for quality control. It seems that their idea of quality control is to have the customer keep sending back their shoddy products until the customer finally gets what they originally paid for, without so much as offering a discount to the customer for the trouble and expense of sending the defective product back!

Nice catch. At least there was some faculae showing on the limb.

Nice image. Thanks for posting it. It confirmed that I did indeed glimpse the HH last night with my 120mm f5 refractor.

In the winter months, I use my ability to split A & B, with my 20x80's, as a test for seeing conditions. If I can split them with the bins, I know it is a great night to split doubles with my frac.

On most night around here, I can see both M81 and M82 with my 8x42's.

When the seeing if very good, I can just split A & B (8.7") with my 20x80's.

Great image. Thanks for posting it. Your image confirms what I have been observing visually.

Over the last couple of weeks of observing Venus, I have been noticing what I call bright cusp caps at both cusps. The southern cusp cap appears to be about twice the size of the northern one, and both cusp caps appear to have dusky borders. But this is Venus and I'm never 100% certain of what I'm seeing.

Awesome!

More excellent sketches. Very similar to what I'm observing through my 90mm, except I have yet to definitely see a white oval. I especially like how you did not over emphasize the GRS, a lot of sketcher's (including myself) tend to do that.

Excellent.

I caught a quick glimpse of Mercury Saturday evening. I believe (very low, and Mercury has fooled me before) I could make out a gibbous phase at 142x through my 90mm.

My 10" Dob is thirty years old this year and still going strong!

Excellent report, and your attitude regarding your current equipment is spot on. Years ago, when I first got started, I made the mistake of giving in too quickly to "aperture fever". I've recently gone back to using smaller aperture instruments again and find myself observing much more. You could spend the rest of your observing life with your 130mm and not see everything it could reveal to you.

Excellent report. I'll be visiting the Puppis region tonight, weather permitting.