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.

__________________
Mike
. 10" GSO Dob
. 11x70 Binos
. IceInSpace - Aussie/NZ astro website and community forums
http://www.iceinspace.com.au/logo.jpg

You could try looking through just one of the eyepieces at a time and see if the same problem appears in both.

Iceman:

I can describe what I see with my 7 x 50s and 20 x 80s and that may help...

I see Jupiter and it's moons as clear discs with my 20 x80s. However since I still havent got my mount built-(I'm waiting for a first surface mirror from the US, I have decided to go with a mirror mount rather than a parallogram, (I hope I have made the right decision because the first surface mirror is winding up costing me the equivalent of several vital organs... )), the planets shake quite a bit when viewed hand held. However from a dark site I am sure I can see the cloud bands in Jupiter.

I can see the rings of Saturn also.

What I do see however is a glow-a corona? if that's the technical term- around the very bright objects-moon, venus, jupiter -around a clearly defined disc. Maybe this is atmospherics maybe this is optics, I need to find out. I think it was much less of a problem in a dark site..

Once I have seen the moons of Jupiter through the 20x80s I find I can then spot the moons even through my 7 x50s because I then know what I'm looking for. Can't see any cloud bands with the 7 x50s of course.

I can seen an oblong Saturn with 7x50s -cant make out rings but can clearly see the object is not spherical.

Like you I originally bought a Chinese made 13X70s from an supplier here in Sydney but I had to return them because of double images. Another guy I met told me he had a similar problem with binos from the same shop, so he went back and tried a couple before he found one that worked well for him. It appears that QC in the case of some of these Chinese made binos may not be all that consistent but if you luck out then it works really well.

Dont know if any of this helps