describing magnification

[Shane]

OK thanks Moonshane

I'll have a look Monday booked a hotel in windsor so should get some good views and I now have my planisphere and guide to the northern constellations, can't wait, just hope for a clear night

Cheers

Shane

[abumuhannadh]

hmm, this thread has gone far from the subject, all good anyway.

lets get it back on topic

i have a 16x50 binocular, and according to the description of magnification in this thread i should be able to view the moon 16 times bigger in its diameter than what it looks to the naked eye.

so i was checking if that is true with my binoculars and found out that it isn't the case. i have estimated that it does not get any bigger than 8 or 9 times.

are my binoculars lying in its magnification power?

Amazon.com: Vanguard FR-1650 Binoculars: Camera & Photo

[Moonshane]

how are you measuring the 8-9 times?

if you are doing this by a rough assessment of how much field it takes up then this will not be accurate as the result will depend on the field of view of the binoculars.

fro memory the moon takes up about 0.5 of a degree of sky. so if you have a pair of binoculars which have a four degree field, the moon will fill about 12.5% of the field but still be 16x bigger than if you looked with your eyes. it's a relationship between focal length of the binoculars, magnification and aperture so it's not that simple a calculation.

maybe others can explain it better than me.

[abumuhannadh]

i checked it by looking through the binocular with one eye and looking directly from another eye at the same time and comparing both images.

wont it give the right estimation?

[Moonshane]

it might, but I reckon I'd find it very hard to be objective about it as the eye is notoriously easy to fool (well, mine are anyway )

[abumuhannadh]

but i guess 16x times and 9x are very different

if it was about 13x then i could have believed it is my eye fooling me, but it is far smaller.

[LukeSkywatcher]

hmm, this thread has gone far from the subject, all good anyway.

lets get it back on topic

i have a 16x50 binocular, and according to the description of magnification in this thread i should be able to view the moon 16 times bigger in its diameter than what it looks to the naked eye.

so i was checking if that is true with my binoculars and found out that it isn't the case. i have estimated that it does not get any bigger than 8 or 9 times.

are my binoculars lying in its magnification power?

Amazon.com: Vanguard FR-1650 Binoculars: Camera & Photo

I dont think this thread has gone off topic. You have 16x50 bins?. That means that you can observe the Moon 16 times closer to Earth then it is................not 16 times as big as it looks (naked eye)

[abumuhannadh]

I dont think this thread has gone off topic. You have 16x50 bins?. That means that you can observe the Moon 16 times closer to Earth then it is................not 16 times as big as it looks (naked eye)

i guess it is the same thing, if you calculate it. simple geometry

and read the first few posts where we discussed it.

Abu Muhannadh