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[tomhole]

I picked up a pair of GTO zooms from Gary Hand yesterday(while I was picking up my 2" OCS). I bought them to play around with magnifications to determine what the seeing will allow for the night and then switch to better ep's that are in that f/l. $120 for the pair, might be fun. They aren't click stop so I put a pair of zip ties on to help find the intermediate position.

It's not dark yet, so I will cover that later, but I had a lot of fun with them looking at terrestrial stuff. I could merge the views easily at all powers and the darn things are nearly parfocal throughout the zoom. By nearly, I mean very small tweaks were required from full zoom to full wide. I spotted something moving on a tree trunk 100 yards away and zoomed from 74x to 214x and it was an ant. That was worth the $120 right there (not really, but this might have some serious entertainment value).

Does anyone do any terrestrial viewing with their binos? Although not a lot of fun in a 10" dob, the bino view was much more inspiring than the cyclops view. Looking at a pine tree that is 100 yds away at 214x was very 3D like compared to cyclops. This looks like it might be fun. I have a short tube 80 on the way. I'll have to try that out on terrestrial objects. What will the image orientation be with a mirror diagonal? I'm assuming upright, swapped left and right. Not sure what an ST80 will look like with binos hanging off of it. Probably worth a picture, though.

If it clears up, I'll give the zooms a try tonight.

Clear skies,

Tom