20 X 50 Binoculars?

[stargazer1981]

Are they powerful enough for DSO? Is it worth me buying a good pair or budget alternative'

[Langy]

Your best advice may be to post it in the Binoculars section (I made that mistake).

I believe that with 10x50 you will see DSO but how much I'm not sure. If you are going up to 20x50 then you will have much less light getting in for that bigger magnification. Not sure of the maths but I think it will be a substantial amount less.

Certainly Andromeda etc will all be visible with 10x50.

And with something so powerful you will need a tripod and mount.

[Tiny Small]

10x50 are fine hand held and you will be able to see some DSOs very well. They are effectively 2 finderscopes stuck together, so whatever you can see through a 9x50 finderscope, you can see through the binos but with a bit more contrast due to using two eyes. Get a pair, you won't be sorry. Lots of the larger Messier objects will look great through them and they make a great spotting tool for lots of the others.

[Tiny Small]

And depends on what your budget is. A £50 or £60 pair will give you decent views. A £200 or £300 pair will give better but that doesn't take away from the £50 or £60 pair.

[ronin]

Is this as well as having a scope or instead of a scope?

I would not recommend binoculars instead of a scope, but I would recommend them as well as a scope.

They are best considered as different instruments for different applications.

Also what do you mean by DSO's?

A few of the galaxies will (may) show up in them, clusters will be fairly good, nebulas will be difficult, M42 excepted, however that will still be small.

I would always suggest the scope route first, then get a set of binoculars. Others will go for the other. So not much of a specific answer.

If a scope then someone posted about the TS 90mm 500mm FL Achro, which appears reasonable, cost it is something like £90-110, a 5mm BST would give 100x which is good for M42, Jupiter and may do Saturn - not much on Mars however. It will still have some CA however - it is too fast for an achro to not have.

The diameter is reasonable and the field of view should be nice, clusters would be good, should start o get some galaxies and some of the brighter nebuls (depends on light pollution). It needs a diagonal and eyepieces - so that in effect add to the cost by £50-60 even with just one eyepiece and an average diagonal. Then you need a mount for the whole lot. You will need a tripod at least for 20x50's anyway.

It is all a compromise, and a choice.

As I say, people will have different opinions.

[cantab]

50mm aperture binoculars are certainly capable of bring in a good selection of DSOs.

20x magnification, though, is high. You'll need some sort of support such as a tripod or monopod, and you'll get a narrower true field of view that will make finding things trickier. For those reasons, I would not advise them for a novice astronomer.

With the higher magnification you'll see fainter individual stars, but a lower magnification gives a richer field (more stars at once) which is better when looking at the Milky Way. Most DSOs will be improved - magnification dims the surface brightness of the DSO but it also dims the sky background, so the contrast is retained and the DSO looks bigger and thus more apparent. The Moon will of course look much more impressive at 20x than at 10x.

Overall, I struggle to see the use case for 20x50 much. If you want to handhold, you need lower magnification. If you're happy to keep them mounted, you're free to go to larger apertures. I suppose a 20x50 on a light monopod or tripod would make a good ultra-portable observing setup.