Using a bird spotting scope

[Leebert]

Hi All,

I'm thinking of getting a bird spotting scope for bird watching but also something I can use for astronomy. I would also like to use my telescope eyepieces too if possible.

Looking on the net and on bird watching forums, there are too many to choose from. I was wondering if anyone on here is using a spotting scope and how do they get on with it?

Many thanks,

Lee

[jasonbirder]

You're unlikely to be able to use your Astronomical Eyepieces in a birding scope...as far as I know they all use brand specific bespoke eyepieces...

Typically the choice is between a wide angle eyepiece of about x30 and a zoom eyepiece...narrower field of view magnification range c x20 - x65 or thereabouts...

I was a very keen birder and used to occasionally use my birding scope for Astronomy...they're all essentially well engineered, achromatic rich field 3 inch refractors so will give good views of clusters...milky way brighter messier objects etc...you'll not have much magnification but Jupiter will show its moon and some detail etc etc...

Its a while since I bought mine (an Opolyth 80ED) so not sure what the current models are...but i'd guess the Swarovski and the Zeiss are the top line with Nikon a mid range and Opticron a "value" alternative...

[AndyH]

Hi.

I'd go about it the other way.

Get a 66 or similar, astronomy based, small ED apo, buy a good quality erect image diagonal and bobs yer uncle. Great for both activities.

I used a 66Ed in this way for years to great effect.

I've seen weather proof jackets online somewhere, for the 66ED's.

Andy.

[AndyH]

Off the top of my head, Pentax are the only manufacturers that let you use std 1.25" eyepieces, on their birding scopes.

[acey]

I have 2 small scopes for travel: a Celestron 80mm f5 (which is like the StarTravel 80) and a Yukon 100mm spotting scope (which is a folded refractor). Both go on a photo tripod.

Pros and cons:

With the Celestron I can use my 1.25" eyepieces, filters etc. It has a 90 degree diagonal, best for astro viewing. Optical quality (with decent eyepieces) is better than the Yukon.

The Yukon has an integrated finder and zoom eyepiece, which gives a wider field than the plossls I use in the Celestron, but with evident edge-of-field aberration. My initial feeling was that I frankly didn't like it. Also the Yukon is a 45-degree eyepiece, which is less convenient for astronomy.

And yet I've wound up using the Yukon far more than the Celestron. This is because when travelling I actually prefer not to have a bunch of accessories to carry too: the spotter has everything in one unit, inside one convenient carry bag (which unzips to form a protective jacket during use). I actually prefer to have a zoom eyepiece for deep sky work - taking my Celestron plus Baader zoom would give much better views but would be more stuff to carry/drop/lose etc.

The difference of aperture doesn't make much difference to the view. The Yukon uses mirrors to fold the light path, which introduces light loss and probably some aberration. And the difference between 100mm and 80mm is not huge anyway. But the Yukon is a more portable package because of its design.

Mostly I use these scopes on holiday in southern europe, when I'm mostly interested in low-lying southerly objects - so the 45-degree angle of the Yukon is then less of an issue. If I were wanting to look at the zenith then it would be more of an inconvenience.

http://www.outdoorgb.com/p/Yukon_100X_Spotting_Scope_Kit/?utm_source=froogle&utm_medium=directory&utm_content=GBR&currency=GBP&country=GBR&SelectedBundle=151312

[AndyH]

I've seen weather proof jackets online somewhere, for the 66ED's.

Andy.

Here we go........

Bereitschaftstasche für ED APO 66/400mm von TS, William u. ähnl.

Andy.

[AndyH]

The small astro scopes have superb colour correction for birding. Zero purple fringing at 40x when viewing hawks on distant trees.

I had a lesser quality scope and this effect annoyed me greatly. The 66ED was like night and day.

Also, these quality astro scopes are waaay cheaper than birding scopes.

My tuppence worth

Andy.

[ollypenrice]

I've tried it both ways round, birding with astro and astro with birder. I agree, as above, that birding with astro is the better solution, especially if you already have EPs. The digiscoping birders love the ED80, for example.

Astro with my birder, a Nikon zoom EP'd device, can show Saturn's rings, albeit small, at 45X so it is a good lens. Hewever, the compulsory 45% is a pest and so is the imited field of view. Also the irregular shape makes it very hard to sight along the scope to find your target.

I now use either my ZS66 or TeleVue Pronto for birding, mainly. The Pronto was very cheap second hand and has glorious optics but is rather heavy. Well, very heavy!

Olly

[dobbie]

acuter spotting scopes are fine for both, acuter have brought The new Acuter DS-PRO series advanced achromatic which you can use 1.25" ep,s with, all my teleview ep,s work with it and they all barlow using tal barlows it also as a dual speed focuser its not a ed ( 80/100mm ed ver on they way?) but you can use -violet filter with it my brother is using it at the moment and he loves it , hope this helps dobbie.

ps. i am using my stellavue 80mm for both .

[AndyH]

When I'm doing birding, I become a colour fringing n a z i. Hate that effect. Spoils it for me. All my own opinion of course.

Andy.

[JonF]

Off the top of my head, Pentax are the only manufacturers that let you use std 1.25" eyepieces, on their birding scopes.

Not quite right. Lots of Celestron models allow the use of standard eyepieces, as do Pheonix. I use a Celestron C70 Mini Mak as a grab and go astro scope. Works extremely well, I guess due to it being a Maksutov Cassegrain design. I've tried it with eyepieces from 40mm down to 6mm, which with a focal length of 750mm gives a wide range of views. The standard zoom is OK, but no match for a decent Plossl. I find a 20mm gives the best results, 12mm also good. 6mm didn't work out so well, high magnification but problems with eye relief. The down side, at first, was finding things. It has a vast range of focus, and the combination of that with quite high magnification made it very difficult to find objects. I got round this by attaching a red dot finder, initially with cable ties. I'm going to make a firmer connection with some oversized jubilee clips. With this combination it works very well. I use it on a medium format photo tripod. Probably gets more use than my proper astro scope, as it's ready to go in seconds. I paid fifty quid for it on eBay, and it's been an absolute bargain.

[AndyH]

Not quite right. Lots of Celestron models allow the use of standard eyepieces, as do Pheonix. I use a Celestron C70 Mini Mak as a grab and go astro scope. Works extremely well, I guess due to it being a Maksutov Cassegrain design. I've tried it with eyepieces from 40mm down to 6mm, which with a focal length of 750mm gives a wide range of views. The standard zoom is OK, but no match for a decent Plossl. I find a 20mm gives the best results, 12mm also good. 6mm didn't work out so well, high magnification but problems with eye relief. The down side, at first, was finding things. It has a vast range of focus, and the combination of that with quite high magnification made it very difficult to find objects. I got round this by attaching a red dot finder, initially with cable ties. I'm going to make a firmer connection with some oversized jubilee clips. With this combination it works very well. I use it on a medium format photo tripod. Probably gets more use than my proper astro scope, as it's ready to go in seconds. I paid fifty quid for it on eBay, and it's been an absolute bargain.

True. I should have said 'of the traditional birding specialist scopes manufacturers.'

Andy

[StuW]

I use my Skywatcher ED80 Pro DS for birdwatching and digiscoping, coupled with a Baader Zoom eyepiece it's unbeatable apart from weight.

Sent from my Transformer TF101 using Tapatalk

[John]

I used to use a Celestron 5" SCT with a 45 degree diagonal as a wildlife scope. It was a bit bulkier than the traditional birding scopes but the 1250mm focal length coupled with a Hyperion 8mm - 24mm zoom really hauled distant estuary birds in. No false colour either.

[Dave Smith]

My first telescope was a Swarovski 80mm birding scope. I did get an adapter for it to be able to use astro eyepieces. With it I remember seeing M42, M57 and also found my first domes on the Moon (Arago), even saw the Cassini division on Saturn. I still have it for birdwatching but have more suitable scopes now for astronomy. As far as I was concerned it was the right choice for me for both hobbies.

Dave

[Psychobilly]

I bought another tripod to handle the TV pronto for birding the OM wont use it to heavy and he worries about dsmaging it... he uses my old Equinoxe 66 pro ..

I might defork the ETX 105 as well and add a dovetail threaded with a standard tripod bush...

Peter...

[Muphrid]

The number one spotting scope on the market is the Kowa 883/4 (883 angled, 884 straight) Kowa use a pure flourite crystal for the objective lens, so it's really good quality - will outperform the Swarovski HDs!!! (that's not just my opinion, it's fact)

However, Zeiss scopes can be fitted with an adapter to take astronomical eyepieces.

Frankly, I think you'd be better off buying a reasonable spotting scope for birding - say an Opticron 66ED and spending the difference on an astro scope.

Avoid Nikons like the plague!!!!!

[Leebert]

Thanks for all the replies.

As much as I'd like another astro scope, I'm looking at a small terrestrial spotting scope. Wifey doesn't want yet another astro scope in the house but is okay with me getting a simple device that she can use 'out of the box' on a normal camera tripod similar to if she were using binoculars. My budget, which I omitted to mention, is fairly tight at around £200 - £250.

Since posting, I have been looking at a Celestron Ultima 65 at £120. Nicely within budget for what I (we) intend to use it for and it has a T thread so I can attach a camera. I did briefly look at ED glass version but that's nigh on three times the cost and beyond my budget.

I think I'll take a wander to my local shop next week and see what that one and others are like in the flesh. I'll be interested to see if there is any colour fringing and if it's intrusive.

Many thanks

Cheers,

Lee

[E621Keith]

I use my Pentax PF-80 EDA as a widefield grab and go. It's really light and I can easily transport it, tripod and eyepieces on a bicycle. At 1.4 kg, the Pentax is less than a third of the weight of my SV80s. The focuser is very smooth to operate and much better than the one on my C6 and C9.25. The twist lock 1.25" eyepiece clamp is really well designed. In fact, I wish Pentax will restart making astro accessories with this eyepiece lock.

However, optically the spotting scope is not in the same league as the my 80mm APO, not even close. False colour is detectable in the Pentax at 60x on high contrast day time objects, while the SV80s do not show any hint of false colour even at 160x. The APO is also much brighter. Also, the Pentax do not have enough focus travel beyond infinity, so you will need a barlow if you wish to use a webcam. Unlike astro scopes, the spotting scope has a tapered tube with a off centre prism housing and that make pointing the scope really difficult. There are no way of attaching finders to the tube either, there is too much taper on the tube body and not enough adjustment on most finders. I think Scope n skies sells a RDF for use with spotting scope which attached to the tripod base, but I've never tried it.

The scope is most suited for wide field. It will show the brighter DSOs, but it has its limit as an 80mm scope. You can also see the belts on Jupiter and rings around Saturn, but they're quite small at 60x. I tried to use my 3mm Radian (160x) on the Pentax, the results is tragic. Unfortunately, I don't have any eyepieces between 3 and 8 mm but I'd say the upper magnification limit is around 60x.

If your budget is £250 and you don't need the scope to be light or waterproof. I'd suggest getting a used WO 66 or 72 APO if your primary use is astro.

[Leebert]

Had a look at a couple today. Unfortunately, the one I was interested in wasn't in stock so I had a look at a couple of others.

Firstly, an Opticron GS52. I was fairly impressed until the next one came out - a Celestron Regal 65. This was much brighter due, in part I guess, to the slightly larger objective lens. Also, the colour fringing was worse on the Opticron.

What surprised me then was that the Celestron was cheaper by around 100 quid!

I'll be interested to get the Ultima 65 in my hands for a look through to see how it compares considering it's about 1/3 of the price.

Cheers,

Lee

[ollypenrice]

[quote=Muphrid;

Avoid Nikons like the plague!!!!!

Interesting. Could you enlarge on this? While working on a collimation bench for sorting out an astro refractor I used my Nikon birder as a control item and it gave an excellent artificial star test, just as it gave an excellent result on Saturn... and seems to me to give an excellent result on birds as well! I'm an astronomer so I have only a casual approach to birding I'm afraid. But I'm all ears.

Olly

[Flying Eye]

Hi Lee,

I just joined, to use the search, and to see if anyone else was doing what I was thinking of doing and here you are! <g>

I'm eyeing the Mini Mak 70 as my budget is going to be a lot lower than yours. I will want to use it with a web cam for both birding and the the odd glance skywards on the right night.

What I can't work out is how close in I should expect one of these to be good for. For pretty close in birding that could be a deal breaker if it can't focus down close enough.

Any ideas about finding out about that aspect?

Cheers,

Ian

(I must go and sort a proper sig out) <G>

[Leebert]

Hi Ian,

Welcome to the forum

I had a look at the mini mak and other similar ones whilst searching.

There were a few different figures quoted for minimum focus distance that I remember. These varied from about 4.2 to 5 metres or so or around 16ft in old money. It does vary depending on what magnification you are using. The link below states 16ft at 25x.

C70 Mini Mak Spotting Scope - Spotters

I hope that helps.

Cheers,

Lee

[Flying Eye]

Thanks so much Lee,

I must have missed the specs and other tabs last time I was looking.

It certainly did help, and this one is definitely on my list now.

Won't be this year, but certainly next I suspect.

It's probably a smidge better than the Yukon 20x50 Scout collapsible spyglass type I was initially considering. Mostly the lower chromatic aberration is the clincher, for birding in particular, as that is my main desired use.

Thanks very much,

Ian

[LMC]

I've become a big fan of the spotting scope as a dual purpose grab & go for two reasons:

1) - It is (they are) 'ruggedised'. That is sealed against the elements and nasties such as dust and polen and oftem have a rubber coating that makes them a little drop-resistant.

We live on a farm and scopes falling into squelchy things is not altogether unheard-of.

2) They are usually lighter than an equivalrnt aperture telescope. Mine weighs in at about 2kgs (I'm told this is heavy for a spotter) versus about 4kg for my 80mm APO.

I have a Celestron Regal 80ED which is a flourite (FPL53 I think) doublet that has coulour correction the equal of any doublet out there and almost matches my LOMO-lensed triplet!!

Sharpness and contrast are excellent and I see no CA on, well, anything.

This scope got great reviews just about everywhere and I figured they couldn't ALL be lying so I took a punt and haven't looked back.

Highly recommended though the supplied zoom is not parfocal and does show a bit of edge distortion at 20X on close objects.

Nothing really objectionable but these problems disappeared when I plunked-in a Baader MKIII 8-24

For the record though. They make lousy finderscopes due to their odd shape (no rings avail.) and even with a 45* model you'll want a tall tripod to avoid whiplash.