Binocular recommendations please

[ramstar]

Looking to buy my first pair - maximum budget of £150? anyrecommendations please would be appreciated

[CSM]

What do you want to see?

[ramstar]

As much as poss but certainly nebulae, the moon & planets

[jimmyjamjoejoe]

Think you can pick up some quantum 4 15x70 for that. If you fancy something more manageable theres always the strathspey marine 10x50...

[Dreamweaver]

I got a pair of Helios 10X50 binoculars for around £100. They give excellent views. The main thing I have found though is holding them still for any appreciable time that will afford you satisfactory views without the wobbles or shakes creeping in. It's all about comfort and how best to support your binoculars because, trust me, you will want to look at things for a long time and it's a killer holding them up for more than thirty seconds without lactic acid burning your arms off!!

So you can either spend further money on a nice parallelogram smooth action mount for several hundreds of quid or you can stick them on the end of a pole or brace them against something so that your views don’t wobble about and you can save your arms too!

I mounted mine on an old boom mic stand, added some very crude wood bits, a bolt with a wing nut and washer and a bit of ol’ gaffer tape (this should be in everybody’s bag of tricks) and hey presto, an effective mount that does the job, for me anyway.

I haven't found a way to upload any photos on here yet.

[Jim Steele]

I have a set of Olympus DPS-1s i bought off amazon for around £50. Despite their relatively low cost they were money well spent

[glowjet]

A good pair of reasonably powered binoculars are very useful for finding your way about the night sky, you can observe the Moon, many stars / star formations, brighter Planets and pick out some of the attendant moons, but by the low magnification and light gathering power, they are somewhat limited though when it comes to Nebula. However, when used from a very dark site some of the brighter Nebula can be observed and even with the naked eye, but from a back garden with almost minimal light pollution, hunting down such faint objects becomes extremely difficult and nigh impossible, with the odd exception such as the Orion nebula. Good quality optics play a major part when it comes down to glass and coatings, I can give you a for instance, I have pair of the very popular Celestron 15X70, when observing Jupiter one night last year I was able to just make out 3 moons, with my excellent quality Japanese Carton 10X50 Adlerblicks I was able to resolve 4, as a result I do not often use the bigger bins now for night observations, Reasonable quality bins are available from such as Strathspey who had their 10X50 Marine model chosen as the best of bunch in a S&N review some time ago

John.

[Robny]

Recently bought a pair of Helios 10x60 binos fir around £120. Very impressed with the views, sharp clear and well collimated out of the box. They can be hand held but move around alot, they are considerably heavier than 10x50's and the like. A tripod will probably be needed to get the best out of them - oh, great during the day also! I've had great views of the moon, orion and plaides with a viewing of andromeda galaxy. I've not had them long but DONT regret buying them even though they are a little heavier than I thought and I'm 6'5" and 300lb so no weakling

Good luck and choose carefully