imported_iceman
01-March-2004, 09:53 PM
Hi guys.
2 weeks ago I got some Saxon 11x70 binoculars. Overall, they seem to work great and the moon looks excellent through them, deep-space star clusters in the milky way look awesome, but the one thing I'm disappointed about is how the planets look through them.
Not just the planets, but bright stars, even sirius for example.
When looking at the brightest stars (planets in particular, such as jupiter and saturn), I'm not getting the image crispness I was hoping for.
I'll try and explain what i see..
When looking at Jupiter I can see the moons as white specs, that's fine, but jupiter itself appears as a large white blob (sort of expected), except that there's a smudge of light leading down to the bottom right-hand-side of jupiter extending almost the same size of jupiter itself. This means that I can't see a round circle of light, it's round on half, but the other half smudges down and extends so that it's just not a good image.
Similarly when looking at Saturn, I can see an oval "shape", but I can't see the rings as separate from the circle planet simply because there's a big smudge of light down to the right hand side.
I even pulled out my $30 (Australian) 10x25's and looked at Saturn, and even though the image was smaller and nowhere near as bright, I could actually make out more of a saturn 'shape' than I could in my 11x70's, and there was no image smudging. The light was crisper and appeared to be more in-focus without bits of light trailing off.
So I'm not sure what the problem is..
- Is that just what I should expect out of 11x70's?
- Should I be able to see much crisper cleaner images of saturn and jupiter etc?
- Is it just the brand? Are they poor quality and hence poor quality images? They cost about $210 Australian.
- Are they broken? These are the 2nd pair I've received - the first time I received them by courier, one of the 70mm lenses was literally loose and rattling about. I had to send them back and got send these new ones. The lens doesn't rattle etc, and most objects like fine, but I just expected more when viewing the planets.
Your help, and any experience with these types of binoculars is appreciated.
2 weeks ago I got some Saxon 11x70 binoculars. Overall, they seem to work great and the moon looks excellent through them, deep-space star clusters in the milky way look awesome, but the one thing I'm disappointed about is how the planets look through them.
Not just the planets, but bright stars, even sirius for example.
When looking at the brightest stars (planets in particular, such as jupiter and saturn), I'm not getting the image crispness I was hoping for.
I'll try and explain what i see..
When looking at Jupiter I can see the moons as white specs, that's fine, but jupiter itself appears as a large white blob (sort of expected), except that there's a smudge of light leading down to the bottom right-hand-side of jupiter extending almost the same size of jupiter itself. This means that I can't see a round circle of light, it's round on half, but the other half smudges down and extends so that it's just not a good image.
Similarly when looking at Saturn, I can see an oval "shape", but I can't see the rings as separate from the circle planet simply because there's a big smudge of light down to the right hand side.
I even pulled out my $30 (Australian) 10x25's and looked at Saturn, and even though the image was smaller and nowhere near as bright, I could actually make out more of a saturn 'shape' than I could in my 11x70's, and there was no image smudging. The light was crisper and appeared to be more in-focus without bits of light trailing off.
So I'm not sure what the problem is..
- Is that just what I should expect out of 11x70's?
- Should I be able to see much crisper cleaner images of saturn and jupiter etc?
- Is it just the brand? Are they poor quality and hence poor quality images? They cost about $210 Australian.
- Are they broken? These are the 2nd pair I've received - the first time I received them by courier, one of the 70mm lenses was literally loose and rattling about. I had to send them back and got send these new ones. The lens doesn't rattle etc, and most objects like fine, but I just expected more when viewing the planets.
Your help, and any experience with these types of binoculars is appreciated.