Thursday, July 10, 2008

Binocular plus monocular

One of the stunts - and it is a stunt - that I pull with a tripod mounted astronomy binocular, now and then, is to place a low power monocular over the eyepiece to boost magnification. It's a long, long way from turning a binocular into a telescope and optics are less than ideal, even when using high grade binoculars and monoculars. About the only time I rate this as useful, rather than silly, is to check for detail in some open clusters or do a check on the position of double stars. Silly is what I did the other night to try to see the Ring Nebula with my 10x Nikon Astroluxe 10x70 and my Nikon 5x monocular. Did it work? Actually, yes, I did detect the nebula, but the view was hardly worth the effort and it was an effort. I think I will leave telescope work to telescopes.
 
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