As a child I was fascinated by astronomy. Living out in the country, I had no light pollution, and loved looking at the sky even though I had no telescope or binoculars.

My interest was rekindled when I noticed a local drug store had a FirstScope on sale for about $50. When I did some research on it, the reviews were mixed, but I thought I would get it anyway as it was an affordable starting point.

But when I got there they were sold out and would not be getting more.

So I did more research and came across this forum and learned about how binoculars are a great way to start with astronomy as they are more portable and can also be used for wildlife watching. This grabbed me as I was worried this new hobby might go the way of some other hobbies and a telescope would collect dust. And, since I live on beautiful Vancouver Island, there is lots of wildlife to watch.

Since I recently misplaced my small, low powered portable binoculars, I was thinking of replacing them with a better quality higher powered pair anyway.

The problem is that living in Canada that shipping works out quite high when ordering from the US.

So I am left with department store options and I did find one Celestron SkyWatcher dealer within one hours drive of here and his prices are quite reasonable.

I have gone through the excellent forum material here on choosing binoculars, but I have a few questions about these specific ones.

Here are some of the options available to me - all are within my budget - under $200 CAD:

1. Bushnell Astralis 15x70MM

2. Celestron SkyMaster 20-100x70 Zoom Binoculars

3. Celestron SkyMaster 25-125x80 Zoom Binoculars

Both my wife and I wear glasses, so we need to be able to wear these while viewing and I do have a tripod we can use for viewing.

Here are my questions.

1. Has anyone had any experience with the Bushnell Astralis?

2. SkyMaster has both Zoom and non-zoom versions. So how would the 20-100x70mm binoculars above compare to their 15x70mm nonzoom here for sky viewing?

3. If I choose the SkyMaster, what differences would the 25-125x80mm have from the 20-100x70mm for me?

4. It looks like the magnification on the zoom binoculars runs about 100x to 125x. Reading about telescope magnification, it looks like a 500mm telescope with a 4 mm eyepiece would have a magnification of 125x. This seems to be about the same as these binoculars. Or am I reading the specs wrong?

I really appreciate all the great information you have all posted here. It really helps people like me.