Clear night with binoculars

[Stu]

Down near swanage camping, fabulous clear night last night. Just used my canon bins but clearly saw M81, M82 and M51. Not much detail me course but showed how dark it was. Milky Way incredible

[jgs001]

Nice one Stu

[Mark at Beaufort]

Glad you had a good night with your binos. Its well worth taking this type of instrument on holiday. It just shows what can be seen. I also used my 15x70 last night and like you picked up M51, M81 and M82. Also grabbed some delights in sagittarius.

mark

[eddy]

Ive just got myself a pair of binos, and of course went out last night, but only managed a few doubles and a small cluster, i did try and find M51,81-82 but failed. Could you describe what i should be expecting to see (the Binos are 15x70's)

Thanks a lot

Eddy

[Stu]

i can mainly just see fuzzy shapes, brighter in the centre which match the outlines in photos. M82 showed hints of detail, M51 just two bright fuzzies touching each other. The Canon stabilizing certainly helps

[eddy]

Is the stablilizer actually good? or a little over rated at all...

Eddy

[Stu]

i find them very good. You still need to hold them as steady as possible but the stabilizing gets rid of all the high frequency wobbles and shakes and makes things much clearer

[Stu]

also meant to say that M31 was visible to the naked eye and looked huge in the bins. Just about saw M32 or M110 above, cant remember which is which?