A little bit of trivial info so you'll understand my observing spot... I am an active duty US Air Force Staff Seargent and a VERY amature astronomer. Back home in the Azores I have a Celestrron C11-SGT with GPS and all that other good stuff I piled on the scope and rarely used because I enjoy star hoping. My main complaint with the C11 is that its just to big to move around so when I deploy to the middle east I can't take it with me. About a month ago I volunteered for my 6th trip to the desert, this time to Bagram Air Field Afghanistan. Before I left my home station I ordered a set of Zhumell supergiant Binoculars and a tripod to bring with me so I could still do some observing while I'm out here saving the world... lol The binocs made it to the post office at my home base the day after I left. When I got here and got my mailing address I called back to my post office at Lajes field and had them forward the box to me. It arrived yesterday, as did a big cloud bank I couldn't see through. Go figure.

My observing spot is the wooden deck right outside the door to the B-Hut where I sleep. We are across the street, maybe 200 yards from the flight line with two story buildings between my and the flightline which thankfully, block most of the airfield lights. 50 feet behind me is a bright light I can't turn off or block and there are bright spotlights a hundred yards or so in each direction which are blocked by the B-huts on either side of me. I have good deep shadow to set up in with exception of the light behind me but it doesn't interfere to badly as long as I keep it to my back. There is a substantial light bubble to deal with due to the proximity of an active flight line and all the normal lighting around the camp and there is more dust in the air then you could possibly imagine if you've never been someplace like Afghanistan before. There is a reason you always see people over here with thier faces covered. Its so they can breath.

Jupiter is shining brightly low to the south west so I figured it would make an easy first target. I mounted the binocs (4.4lbs) to the Zhumell tripod that came with them which was a very simple process. The Tripod is sturdy and holds the binocs steady with no problem. I sighed in on Jupiter and easily resolved the disk of the planet. Not big enough to see clouds or any detail really but it did seem to have a bit of a yellowish tinge to it. Very close to the planet on the left side was Io and moving out from the planet on the right was Europa and Callisto easily visible without averted vision. The whole visable system was easily resolved clearly enough that I let a few passers-by take a look through the binocs and they were all easily able to understand exactly what they were looking at. We were all very impressed with the quality of these optics considering the grand total of $149.00 I paid for the whole setup.

I refered to Stellarium and decided that I "should" be able to star hop over and find M25. Due to the light polution and dust in the atmoshere you can only see about 3-4 stars in that whole portion of the sky with the naked eye but those stars where in a pretty decent position to be able to hop from one to the next. I scanned across a few stars to get into the general area then scanned up and to the right slightly and found M25. I was able to resolve a very large number of stars in the open cluster at a Mag 4.6 (according to stellarium) with relative ease. Once again, the crowd of onlookers took a peak and was sumarily amazed.

Next I decide to try looking for M18, another open cluster but it was just slightly to low and ended up being just below the roofline of the B-hut we were next to. I figured what the heck, lets find the omega nebula which should have been in the sky just above and slightly too the right of M18. I slowly scanned up and found a star pattern that looked very much like what stellarium said the omega nebula should look like but due to light polution and all the dust in the atmosphere we couldn't make out the nebula at a Mag 7.

At this point I noticed it was almost midnight. I have a meeting at 8am and a flight to catch later in the day to escort some gear to a different base so sleep is next on my list of things to observe. lol Overall, strait out of the box these Binoculars performed excellently for a novice who has never looked at the stars through a set of binoculars before. I will be enjoying them for the next few months ovr here and when I get back home to the Azores they will be assured a place on a tripod right next to the C11 every time I'm outside observing. For $149.00 for the Binocs and tripod set I would rate them an excellent buy

Great summary! I love observing through binocs, esp. in summer.