Need Help from experienced Members

[aksingha]

Hello everyone, I need help deciding a cheap bino/scope. I choose two products from Celestron- Celestron Travel Scope 70mm and Celestron Skymaster 20x80 Binocular. I am confused to choose among the two because one seems to have bigger aperture but fixed mag of 20x whereas the scope has less aperture of only 70mm than the bino but comes with eyepiece that give 40x mag. So guys please suggest me the better among the two. Thanks :smiley:

[Steep]

The scope will be more comfortanle to use and a bit more versatile in that you can use different eyepieces to get different rssults. The binos of course take up less space.

[astronymonkey]

Hi aksingha,

Welcome to SGL.

There are lots of things to consider when choosing what to buy but two of the main ones are the budget you have and what you want to see.

For about £60 you can get a decent set of Binoculars like he celestron 15 x70 and then the prices rise from this point onward with 20x80 being had for under £100 but after that prices go up considerably. 15x70 are light enough to be hand held but the magnification means a tripod is best used and at 20x80 these do need a tripod to get steady views. With these you will see lovely views of open clusters ad wide field views but with the mag being low then the planets etc will look pretty small.

As for the refractor, here you will be able to interchange the eyepieces to get higher magnifications but will loose he widefield views and portability of the binoculars ( although the scope you mention isnt that big anyway) and there is a review of this scope from an SGL member here

For my money id be tempted by the scope, purely for its ability to go to higher magnifications but as it is more of a starter scope the images may not be that fantastic at higher magnifications anyway.

So in summary...whats your budget, and what do you want to look at ?

Cheers,

Astronymonkey

[John]

Hi and welcome to the forum !

To make sensible use of the 20x80 binoculars for astronomy you will need to invest in a tall and sturdy tripod as they are too powerful to be used hand held. This will almost double the price of that option I would think.

The Travelscope 70 comes with a small tripod I believe so it's ready to go out of the box (more or less) for astro use. You can improve the accessories with it but it would still show you quite nice views of the moon, star clusters and Jupiter and Saturn as supplied.

I've tried a number of large binoculars for astro use and found that I prefer a scope, even a smallish one.

[aksingha]

Thank you all for taking out time to help. After all the great opinions i think i should go for the scope. Thank you all once again