Binoculars for Astronomy

There is so much you can achieve with binoculars for astronomy use. Compared to telescopes they are inexpensive, very portable, have no setting up time unless you’re using some form of support. They allow excellent moon views, planetary views, star fields, comets and even deep sky objects and with views which are right-way-up they make navigation easy for beginners. Remember Galileo had no more power than todays binoculars when he observed Jupiter and its moons.

A 40 to 50mm aperture is advisable as you want to capture as much light as possible and you’ll probably need at least 7 times magnification. Higher magnification power will make the binocular harder to get a good image with due to the handshake effect unless you are using a tripod or some form of support. The giant binoculars are great but definitely need support.

If you’re young you can make use of large exit pupils but by the time you’ve hit your forties your pupils will not dilate past about 5mm so don’t get too immersed in that particular specification unless you are buying for a young person. You can estimate the exit pupil of a binocular by dividing the aperture in mm by the magnification (so an 8x 40 binocular has an exit pupil of 5mm).