Really nice views during holidays

[michael.h.f.wilkinson]

Had some really great views with my Omegon 15x70 binos this summer, in particular in France (Dienville, near Troyes).

Early in the night had a go at the moon, and showed some kids on the campsite the craters (one 10 y.o. girl was completely blown away by the view, and promptly gathered all her friends, great fun). Also showed them Venus, Mars and Saturn, but these remain featureless.

Revisited a string of old favourites:

- M13 in Hercules, almost always my first port of call. Really a lot brighter than in my 10x50

Visited Sagittarius region:

- M22 a really great globular

- M8, M16, M17, M18, M20, M21, M24, M25: all great stuff to just glide through with binos

- Had some difficulty identifying M11 in Scutum (very easy object to see), as it looks like a globular but is a very compact open cluster. You need a bigger scope to identify its nature.

- M27: really nice in these binos

Then started a search for more globulars:

- M28 Easily missed near M22

- M56 (Lyra) hard to spot in its dense surroundings

- M15 Beauty!!

- M71 Quite faint, needed averted vision

Later turned my attention to some galaxies:

- M51: readily visible (far more borderline in the 10x50s)

- M81 & M82: easy (again, much better than the 10x50)

later still:

- M31: Brilliant, with nice hint of dust lane

- M32 & M110: Just picked out (not in 10x50)

- Double cluster in Perseus: magnificent!!

(this was just the first night of observing!)

Later in the holidays turned my attention to Jupiter and its moons. I did find that if I only had a single bright object in the field of view, it sometimes showed as a very close double (regardless of the inter-pupil distance used), suggesting some misalignment of the optics. This effect vanishes when more objects are in the FOV.

Also, the Omegon is slightly less sharp than the Bresser 10x50, but for just EUR 90, I guess that this is to be expected. Despite these slight shortcomings, the 15x70 is great!

Just goes to show how handy binos are for casual deep sky observing.