Specs to look for when choosing a pair of binoculars for hand held Astronomy.

[Chris]

I remember buying my first astro binoculars very well indeed because it was a complete disaster! I might have been better off just cutting out the middle man and putting £29 straight in the Bin! In fact I think that's where the binos ended up! 

I've made a quick video just to highlight some of the good things to look out for in a binocular for hand held astronomy. It's not a perfect video by any means as I can only allocate a bit of time to making videos at the moment, but I think there's some solid advice in there. 

I kind of wish I'd talked a bit about exit pupil in terms of contrast, and touched on IPD (interpupillary distance) but I think that's all I missed? 

About 20 pairs of binoculars have passed through my hands since that first fateful pair, so hopefully I've learnt enough to share

 

   

 

[Louis D]

I might have missed it, but did you touch on eye relief for folks with strong astigmatism that must wear eyeglasses while observing.  I don't think any binoculars come with astigmatism correction (DIOPTRX-like), correct?  You need to look for binoculars with large eye lenses that are mounted nearly flush to the top of the folded down eye cup.  In general, I've found that those retracting eye cups need to be completely removed in some manner to achieve sufficient eye relief for eye glass wearers.  They simply do not retract until level with the top of the eye lens, so they always eat up several precious millimeters of eye relief.  Commonly, simply continuing to twist them down will cause them to start unscrewing entirely from the bino because they are reverse threaded on.

[Chris]

17 minutes ago, Louis D said:

I might have missed it, but did you touch on eye relief for folks with strong astigmatism that must wear eyeglasses while observing.  I don't think any binoculars come with astigmatism correction (DIOPTRX-like), correct?  You need to look for binoculars with large eye lenses that are mounted nearly flush to the top of the folded down eye cup.  In general, I've found that those retracting eye cups need to be completely removed in some manner to achieve sufficient eye relief for eye glass wearers.  They simply do not retract until level with the top of the eye lens, so they always eat up several precious millimeters of eye relief.  Commonly, simply continuing to twist them down will cause them to start unscrewing entirely from the bino because they are reverse threaded on.

Hi Louis, yes I covered the need for long eye relief binoculars >15mm if you need glasses. Wouldn't it be good if Televue teamed up with one of the Bino manufacturers to make that happen However, Pentax to the rescue! The Pentax SP WP's I'm demoing here have 20mm ER and the field stop is easily seen whilst wearing glasses! Maybe worth looking into Louis