Wednesday, April 3, 2013

Should I Buy a Telescope or Binoculars First as an Amateur Astronomer

By Joseph Swinden


Whenever you imagine an astronomer it has a tendency to conjure the image of a person with a telescope. The desire to buy a telescope and throw open the entire glory of the heavens and its wonders is powerful to begin with. But perhaps you should consider getting binoculars first. Here's why.

Sensible binoculars will assist you to look at the craters on the moon, the moons about Jupiter and in some cases make out some galaxies (which include M81 and M82 in the constellation Ursa Major).

They need to have a great field of view to enable you to better discover the constellations and surf around the stars belonging to the Milky Way. Contrary to many telescopes which invert the picture of the night sky, binoculars are orientated in the same way as you really view the sky, which assists to search out objects of great interest. Because if you realize the thing is down and left from a star you only need to point the binoculars down and left. With a telescope you need to bear in mind left is right and up is down. So, put a reclining chair in your back garden, lay down and savor exploring the evening sky.

Binoculars for astronomy need to be lightweight as well as have an adapter to fix them to a tripod. It is because just one of the difficulties with binoculars is that if they are too weighty then you will start to shake when holding them up to the sky for virtually any length of time. This is certainly made worse by using binoculars, which have a higher magnification, since the trembling is amplified too.

A good, extremely versatile pair of binoculars would normally have about a magnification of 7-10 times and lens apertures of approximately 35-50 mm (shortened as 10x50 for 10x magnification and 50mm aperture).

So which should you buy to begin with, binoculars or maybe a telescope? Binoculars really are a less costly option making learning the night sky an even more pleasurable experience. Sure you won't have the option to delve straight into discovering those hard-to-find faint deep space objects however, if you don't know the constellations then you certainly wouldn't manage to find them anyway. Needless to say, should you purchased a Goto telescope then you wouldn't need to know the constellations, as the telescope will point you straight towards the deep space object, but you'll miss out on the satisfaction that having the ability to navigate the night sky and all its marvels brings to you when you continue to master astronomy.




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