I broke my record

[Ben the Ignorant]

Ten or twelve years before this evening, I was shocked on a winter night that I could plainly see the tremors of turbulence in my old Nikon 10x50 binocs while I watched the Moon. I had never noticed such a boiling of the air ever since, up until today. A clear sky after days and days of clouds and mist prompted me to take my super-fast-set-up 80mm achro (on an AZ-4mount) to have a quick look at the Moon.

The first look through the 6x30 finder surprised me a lot: I could once again see the large-scale waviness that seems to make the whole Moon wobble, plus the smaller-scale turbulence that makes the edge of the Moon serrated, sharper, serrated in slightly different manner, then sharper again, then a bit serrated, in rapid succession. Noticing the focus was a bit smooth, I turned the objective a half-turn or so; turbulence became a little less disturbing and ugly, but still visible, even the smaller wavelets.

Temperature was 1° or 2°, wind very still, tranparency and dryness excellent, making the probability of rain 0%. The usual conditions that give great transparency in winter, together with the horrible air agitation counterpart. Normally I start moongazing at 150x with my achro, lowering the power by steps till seeing allows it, but this time I gave up observing altogether because 24x in the main scope was already too agitated. 

I thought 10x was the lowest power at which I would ever see turbulence, 6x is a shocker. What is the lowest power at which you saw turbulence? 

[Ben the Ignorant]

I watched again an hour later, the extraordinary turbulence in the 6x finder has stopped. Only the minutest trace of it remained, and I noticed just because the prior experience made me look intently for it. At 24x in the main scope it's strong but not over the norm.

[Peter Drew]

I've certainly noticed turbulence in 10x50 binoculars when it has been bad enough. With larger telescopes or higher magnification it's possible to focus on the turbulence which gives a graphic representation of the severity.