First night with bins

[Ian123]

I'm calling this First Night and not First Light due to my struggles with equipment and conditions:

Equipment:

Bins: I struggled most of the morning getting true focus due to the IF and also the (sorry for loss of technical terms) getting the ideal seperation between the eyepiece's to fit my eyes. I kept having to literally wear the bins on top of the bridge of my nose to view reasonably well which resulted in some shaking of the bins. I was most of the night adjusting the seperation of the bins and never really thought i achieved my ideal viewing position.

Tripod: Although the tripod i feel easily handles the bins i found that when i located an object i locked it into what i thought was ideal, i let go of the handle of the slow mo control the view seem to drop a whole 2 degrees. In this case i had to locate and lock the object at the top of my view in the bins for it to drop to centre view when locked and i released my grip!

There is no way to view the zenith, now i know why people state the fact.

All just teething problems with which a little patience and experience wont solve.

Conditions:

less than ideal conditions for viewing, although there was plenty of stars on show inbetween clouds there was plenty of high cloud and when Arcturus in Bootes was rising in the east it was twinkling like a madman. Also giving there was no moon out it seemed to be quite bright, is this due to the sun shining of the clouds??

Observations:

Between 1:00 and 3:30

Jupiter:

First port of call. Beautifull bright disk although there was a blue tint along the west side of Jupiter (CA?) and all four moons were visible. 1 high up NE and 2 close to the limb NE of Jupiter and 1 lower down SW.

Orion:

Quick slew across the belt revealed glorious stars and then down to M42, slight whisp a nebulosity and bright stars were a stunning sight.

M45:

Filled the 3 degree field in bins perfectly, glorious bright and stunning to view.

Mars:

A quick look over my shoulder following M45 i happen to notice what i thought was a star then i noticed the red colour... was this it.... Mars.

Never viewed it before, a quick check on Stellarium comfirmed it. What a sight, most of the night my bins never once deviated from the red planet, great feeling now that i spotted it.

Although it was only a little disk the thought of what i was looking at was really fantastic, wonderfull sight.

Leo:

The is the first time i looked at Leo really and i find it a really nice constellation. Could almost visualize the great Lion himself up in the sky sitting there proudly. Spent most of the night around this area and when viewing Mars( SE of Leo) i noticed a comet whizz by just above Regulus at almost 45 degrees angle, nice sight also.

The rest of the night i just watched the constellations do there dance along the celestial globe and then the clouds started to roll in again, time to pack up!

Ian

[BinocularSky]

Interesting report, Ian -- you seem to have enjoyed yourself, despite the less-than-ideal conditions.

I struggled most of the morning getting true focus due to the IF and also the (sorry for loss of technical terms) getting the ideal seperation between the eyepiece's to fit my eyes. I kept having to literally wear the bins on top of the bridge of my nose

Focus: The easiest "non-techie" way is probably to use a fairly close double star. Cap one objective and focus the other tube, and v.v. A techie way could involve the use of a Bahtinov mask (you can print onto transparency) -- see Konstantinos's (pleiades) thread on checking collimation with Bahtinovs for details.

IPD: It sounds like either your IPD (interpupillary distance) may be quite small or the bridge of your nose quite wide. That is always going to present a problem with binoculars that have large-diameter eyepieces. You should probably decide now whether you can live with it or whether you should return the binocular and opt for something with smaller eyepieces.

Tripod: Although the tripod i feel easily handles the bins i found that when i located an object i locked it into what i thought was ideal, i let go of the handle of the slow mo control the view seem to drop a whole 2 degrees.

A better-quality head, e.g. a Manfrotto 501, may solve that (but not the zenith issue). If you can live with the drift issue, it's not a problem for you but if you are going to try to resolve it, you may be better advised to wait until you can do it in one go which, in the end, tends to work out less expensive than doing it incrementally.

i noticed a comet whizz by

ITYM "meteor"! -- amazing what we can write in the early hours after a good observing session and little sleep!

[Ian123]

IPD: It sounds like either your IPD (interpupillary distance) may be quite small or the bridge of your nose quite wide. That is always going to present a problem with binoculars that have large-diameter eyepieces. You should probably decide now whether you can live with it or whether you should return the binocular and opt for something with smaller eyepieces.

IPD, thank's, i can live with it, great views.

A better-quality head, e.g. a Manfrotto 501, may solve that (but not the zenith issue). If you can live with the drift issue, it's not a problem for you but if you are going to try to resolve it, you may be better advised to wait until you can do it in one go which, in the end, tends to work out less expensive than doing it incrementally.

Will eventually upgrade but this will suffice for the time being, i got pretty used to it, got a system going!

ITYM "meteor"! -- amazing what we can write in the early hours after a good observing session and little sleep!

[BinocularSky]

IPD, thank's, i can live with it, great views.

Yup -- good optics can compensate for a lot of other inconvenience; far better that way round than convenient but rubbish optics.

Will eventually upgrade but this will suffice for the time being, i got pretty used to it, got a system going!

You'll be fine until you get to use a better system -- then the tendency is to become dissatisfied and to covet the better one. 3 years ago I made the fatal error of looking through a friends Swarovski 10x50 -- until then, my own small binoc had seemed very good (it is!), but now, almost every time I use it, I can't keep out that nagging "What would this be like with the Swaro..?":D

Enjoy it -- I'm sure you will!