Comments on: What to Look at With Binoculars

By: marcellus

marcellus — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 16:51:02 +0000

I've got Celestron 15X70's and I'm VERY happy with them. I've got the Binocular Messier certificate from the Astronomical League and am working on the Binocular Deep Sky.

Binocular Astronomy is loads of fun!

By: Tammy Plotner

Tammy Plotner — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 20:23:50 +0000

Thanks, RapidEye…

I know from experience that northern hemisphere Spring doesn't hold as many outstanding binocular goodies as other times, but it's a great time to begin learning. I hoping that each month I can feature a few things that are fairly easy to find for beginners and bright enough to be captured even from suburban settings.

For those of you who are accomplished with creating star charts, M35, M36, M37, M38, M46 and M47 are also still very visible – along with several very nice Collinder clusters.

As always reader votes are what counts… Do you want me to elucidate more on what can be seen right now?

By: RapidEye

RapidEye — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:04:42 +0000

Some decent targets, but this isn't the "BEST" time of year for average binox. Summer and Fall Milkyway are much more fun.
Keep up the good work!

By: Tammy Plotner

Tammy Plotner — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 21:20:21 +0000

Dude! You musta' met my younger sister…

Seriously, I went back into all the Harvard Astrophysic Journals and looked specifically at Allen Sandage's work:

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-basic_connect?qsearch=M3&version=1

According to him:

"These ages show no major conflict with limits for the Friedman time of the expanding Universe when the present uncertainties in the Hubble constant and the deceleration paramenter are considered."

(And, Bill? Let us know how the new binos work!)

Pretty weird, huh?

By: Bunnyman

Bunnyman — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:31:01 +0000

We love you to death, Tammy, but I'm not sure how M3 could be 26 billion years old, given the universe's age of 13.6 billion.

Although I've had blind dates that appeared to be pushing 20 billion.

By: Bill G

Bill G — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:21:08 +0000

Good article Tammy. That's a very nice target list you've provided.

I just picked up a pair of Celestron 15×70 binoculars from Amazon for an absurdly low price. I intend to test drive them once I get a clear night, and compare them to my favorite Orion 10×50s.