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Lunt Mini White Light 6x30 Solar Eclipse Binoculars


Someblokius

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Bought these a few months ago to tide me over while in the middle of a sunscope upgrade and I was really bored. Cost me £30 from Harrison Telescopes. I have now used them enough to form an opinion. Kind of.

I was hoping for something that would show larger sunspots (also eclipses, naturally. Still a few more partials to come in the next few years.) It would be amazing if the same sort of build quality of the Lunt solar scopes could be delivered for this price. Sadly this is not a time of miracles. When I took them out of the blister pack for the first time one of the objectives fell off. Normally that would lead to some harshness in a review, but bear with me. The objective cell (if that's not a melodramatic name for the little rings of rubbery plastic that hold the leneses in place) did just clip back on. Yes, these things have a Fisher-Price feel to them but they do actually work pretty well. With a few issues.

i) The limited focus adjustment meant that I can't use them without my glasses. I am very myopic though, and I get the same problem with lots of binoculars. These things also have pretty brutal eye relief which means I have to jam them against my specs.

ii) They don't come with any covers, case etc. That was solved with a resealable sandwich bag.  No strap either, just a long lanyard made of what seems to be piano wire, from the way it made my neck feel. That got cut off pretty quickly.

iii) Finding the Sun in them is hard. I wasn't expecting this. There is exactly one object visible from Earth through these binoculars. So no lining up foreground objects to guide the view in like I would with normal binocs. No following the glare in like I would looking at the Moon, either. Sweeping around and trying very hard not to peek directly at the Sun is what I settled with. Glueing a sheet of solar film to the top to act as a sight might help, but that would probably double the price of the things. The field seems tightish, I think. About three Suns, so roughly 1.5 degrees?

As for what you can see, you do need the largest sunspot groups. Or an eclipse, I guess.

So in summary I'd say these might be worth considering if you want something to look at the Sun for less than solarscope money, and one of the cheap projector options doesn't draw you in. They're small and light, which means you could take them places, I guess? Maybe it would be cool to take them out with you? They might brighten up the tedium of all those annoyingly non-astronomy places like offices, weddings etc.

So yeah, not quite as awful as might be expected. I wouldn't go so far as calling them 'good' either, but they're not totally useless.

 

 

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