Telescope Reviews: First light: Barska 15x70

On reccomendation from CN, I purchased a pair of Barska 15x70 big binoculars. And with great luck, I dodged the new gear curse. After several weeks of bad weather, tonight was almost cloudless. Of course, the weather gods are probably just teasing me; knowing my luck, I'll have nothing but clouds for a month next time I buy some astronomy gear.

Build quality is pretty good. Interpupillary adjustment is a bit stiff, but it stays where you put it, so I was able to set it where I want it and not touch it again the rest of the night. Center focuser has very little play and is easy to move. With the eyecups out, the focus did shift after a while if I pressed my eyes against it too hard, but other than that it kept focus well. I found it was easiest to use with the eyecups in on a tripod, but handheld I needed the eyecups outto get my eyes in the correct position When mounted on a tripod, there was some shake, but I'm not sure whether that was from the included tripod adapter or my cheap tripod or a combination of both. In any case, a new tripod and adapter is fist on my list of new toys.

The view through the binos is very nice. Durring the day, I tested them on a distant mountain and buildings. I noticed no curvature near the edges. The view was sharp through most of the field, with only some slight fuzz around the edge. It's not absolutly perfect around the edges, but the entire field is definatly usable.

The first object I viewed was Jupiter. It was a tight round ball. I was surprised how big it looked at only 15x. Three moons were easily seen as sharp points. Checking the charts, Europa was behind the planet, which explains why I didn't see it. There was a small ammount of chromatic aberation around the planet, but not enough to be distracting.

Next, I looked for M13. With Hercules so high, it was difficult to view with binoculars, but since it's one of the few object I know well, I had to try. Even with an almost full moon, it was easy to see as a small fuzzy patch. It was easier to view while hand holding the binoculars laying on my back, although I could only hold the binculars for a minuit at most; these things are quite heavy.

Since the moon was so bight, I decided not to try to search for anything else. I'll save that for when I can get to a darker site on a moonless night. I just scanned the sky for a while until the moon cleared the tree. I wonder how many non-astronomers notice how bright it is. I didn't until I got interested in astronomy. I never noticed before that it could easily cast a shadow, or how painfull it was to look at with just the naked eye. I should have known better than to look at the full moon with the big binos, but I did anyway. My night vision now shot, I decided it was time to go back inside.

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