Wednesday, September 19, 2007

Moon Doggled

Last night I was tired and didn't feel much like looking at stars. However, I felt I was close to finding Neptune, so I went outside with my binoculars. The moon is higher and brighter. I had trouble even finding Capricorn. I gave up.

It would be a perfect time to look at the moon, but I'm not that interested right now. I went inside, got dinner and watched three episodes of "Two and a Half Men" (they've been recording on our DVR). I haven't laughed that hard for a while. Then I went to bed. It was nice to relax.

I did check out my binoculars. I was wrong about them being 7x50. They are Simmons Model 1107 which are 10x50 binoculars -- 10x magnification with 50mm lenses. Not bad. Their field of view (FOV) is 367ft @ 1000yds. If I am doing my math right that means their angular FOV is 7 deg. No wonder I get so much better context than with a 1 or 2 deg FOV telescope. Plus I can see much better than the 5x24 sighting scope on the reflector or especially the little sighting scope on my NGC 60 refractor.

No comments: