Great fun with the Gucki's

[Scooot]

This was my first decent spell with the little Gucki's without the moonlight, so not quite a first light. I'd had my contact lenses in all evening, so after I'd returned home from an evening out, my eyes had fully adjusted to them. I knew I wouldn't be able to see the full Fov with glasses on so had bought these with this in mind.

The Gucki's are 28° widebinos with a 2.3 magnification & 40mm aperture, very similar in spec to the wide angle vixons. They are small and light and fit comfortably in a coat pocket.

I always use Ursa Minor to assess how good my sky is so this was my first target. It was clear, but nowhere near as crisp as the previous evening, so naked eye I could see Polaris, kochab and one of it's partners. With the binos I could see all of the constellation, all of the main stars, plus a smattering of surrounding stars I'd never normally see with my naked eye locally.

The whole of Auriga was framed nicely, with a nice collection of stars glowing within. I couldn't see the globulars with these, not tonight anyway, despite staring for some time around the brighter stars in their region. All of Gemini fitted in the view, and if I placed m45 in the right hand edge I could just about see the edge of Cassiopeia.

During a second spell about an hour later I spent some time viewing Orion. Naked eye I could see the outline stars plus a couple of others. With the binos I had a quick count to just over 21. I'd guess they improve the naked eye view by just over a magnitude.

So how good are the optics? I'm not sure it's very fair of me to judge because my contacts don't correct my astigmatism as well as I'd like. My right eye is rubbish and I might as well close it. However I was able to focus to a reasonably sharp view of vega with my left. I felt as if I needed to press the bins slightly to the left side against the bridge of my nose to get the best view. It was apparent that you need to place your eyes very close to the eyepieces. Whilst looking at Auriga I made a mental note to focus on Capella at the edge and it was distorted. How much of this was the binos or my eyes I don't know, a bit of both I suspect. In terms of contrast it was more or less the same as the naked eye view. Its like looking through a large porthole that frames the whole constellation. I'd read the Vixons have a noticeable increase in brightness around the edge of their fov. There is no such effect with these, the brightness is constant across the whole fov until you reach the blackness beyond the field stop. So optic quality wise, difficult for me to judge, but I'd be confident saying they're not as good as my William optics, but then they were less than half the price.

I bought them from AOK in Switzerland and had excellent service. They cost £107 including shipping, although they slipped through the post vat free.

They are great fun to use, I'll be using them a lot and can thoroughly recommend them for enhanced constellation viewing.

Naked Eye View

With the Gucki's

[laudropb]

Very nice report. I am thinking of buying something along these lines just to pop in my pocket when out walking the dog.

[Paul73]

They do look tempting.....

Where did you find them? 

Paul

[Scooot]

Here Paul, http://www.aokswiss.ch/

My plan was to wear my contacts with them as they're useless if you have an astigmatism. However I don't wear them often and as I pick bins up on spec I often can't be bothered to put my lenses in just for a short spell with the gucki's. So I haven't used them as often as I thought I would.

I find them quite difficult to get precise focus although I'm not sure if it's my eyes or the optics. The optics certainly aren't as good as my WO 10x50s. Perhaps the collimation is a little off. I would like to try the vixons to compare but I suppose as these were half the price I suspect the vixons are better. 

Having said all that the FOV is awesome and they're great for increasing naked eye power. 

 

[Paul73]

Thanks.

[PeterW]

It's good to see more stars, but not lose the connection to where you are looking as the field of view is so big. I made myself a pair recently using some old Nikon teleconverters and am waiting for the skies to improve to do more testing. One can only imaging the effect of an Astra magnitude or so on a near perfect sky.....

PeterW