Caoimhín's Content

In most of my videos, I zoom in as far as is necessary to see whatever details I want to talk about. In real life, you are usually limited by the magnification of whatever instrument you are using, be it a telescope a binoculars. People don’t often associate binoculars with astronomy, instead binoculars normally get associated with bird-watching or hunting, or potentially the opera or the theatre. Telescopes are what we think of when it comes to astronomy. If you tell someone to think of a telescope they’ll often think of looking at the stars and usually when people think of studying the stars they think of using telescopes. However, binoculars can be a very useful tool for performing astronomy, and that is what I am hoping to showcase here. Even limited to the magnification of a medium pair of binoculars, there is still plenty to be seen in the sky. We will be looking a little into the future from the date of publishing, but only a little. The New Moon is coming up soon and the Moon will stay very close to the Sun through this weekend, which is good for observing faint objects, the kind of objects that you can’t see with your eyes but that you could see with a telescope. We will be looking at the sky from the city, with all the light pollution that that entails, so the glow of the Milky Way is pretty much invisible. We’re only seeing the brighter stars, meaning that these are not great conditions, but they are enough to use a binoculars.

At this time of the year, Saturn is rising above the Eastern horizon reasonably early in the evening. Given that it is visible to the naked eye, you will know where to point your binoculars more easily. Saturn is the most distant planet that we can see with our eyes, and with a smaller binoculars, the simulated example is a small enough 6 by 30 Carl Zeiss binoculars from the 1960s, it just looks like a ball. Even if we used one of the more powerful binoculars, in this case the massive 25 by 141 Miyauchi BR-141 Galaxy 45, we won’t see too much, but on the right days you might just see Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. This may be the easiest of Saturn’s moons to see, but this is still the moon of a distant planet visible with just binoculars, albeit incredibly big ones. Some binoculars are so large you really need a tripod to use them effectively and if you have to use a tripod with them you’d almost be better off getting a telescope. However, binoculars do give certain benefits. For one, you are looking them with both of your eyes, which can lessen some focus issues. More importantly, for me at least, binoculars are usually designed for you to put your eye right up to the lens or right up to the eyepiece. There is often a rubber or plastic cup that your eye can sit into. With telescopes, you’re normally expected to put your eyes just a little bit off of the eyepiece, there is a gap or eye-relief, where you’re supposed to put your eyes a fem millimeters or so away from the lens itself. This can be tricky to get the hang of, and isn’t usually an issue with binoculars.

Moving from a planet, which we can see with the naked eye, to a galaxy that we can’t, at least form the city, we are going to look for the Andromeda Galaxy. If you read my last article, then you already know where to find the Andromeda galaxy, even when it isn’t visible. In Stellarium, you need to click on something to use the simulated binoculars. In the real sky you could just pull up your binoculars and point in a random direction, or right at the galaxy if you know where it is. Limited by technology, we’re going to start b y looking straight at Cassiopeia, at the star at the bottom of it’s stranger triangle. Cassiopeia is a slightly wonky W shape, so we’re looking at the bottom of the more even, more southerly, wing of the W. Some faint objects will come into view immediately, and this is us looking from the city. Moving gradually to the right and down from this star, you should find two small faint galaxies. These faint galaxies just look like fuzzy shapes through a binoculars like this but still, we can see that they’re fuzzy so we know they’re not just a star. These are only dwarf spheroidal galaxies, Caldwell 17 and 18, so we need to continue coming down and to the right. There will be no mistaking the Andromeda Galaxy once it comes into view, even if it is faint it should look huge. Even with a smaller 6 by 30 binoculars, the galaxy is clearly visible, and of course there are more powerful binoculars. The view look seven better through the 15 by 50 Canon Image Stabilized All-Weather binoculars. These are a bit bigger, but you should still be able to hold them in your hands, the image stabilization should reduce the blurriness you can get from your hands shaking when holding a binoculars for long periods of time. With bigger binoculars, this becomes more of a problem and you will start to need to use a tripod. The very big 25×141 binoculars are an example, as are bigger ones, with modern binoculars getting to 120 by 660 at least. These are very big and therefore a very expensive, where as a comparable view through a small telescope, well, it’s comparable, with a small telescope you can see something very similar to what you would see with a big binoculars and those smaller telescopes are often quite a bit cheaper.

The nearest galaxy to us will of course look great, it’s visible to the naked eye under good conditions so binoculars will have no problem. For a bit more of a challenge, we will take a quick look at two more of the galaxies that featured in the last piece. We will begin by pointing the binoculars up to the end of The Plough. Just under the last star in the ploughs handle, we’ve got the Whirlpool Galaxy. Even with smaller binoculars, its visible as a fuzzy swirl. Going up to a larger pair of binoculars, even looking at this rather distant galaxy, you can get a very clear view of it’s spiral structure. Back to smaller binoculars, we’ll go almost directly up from the Whirlpool, through the last star in the Plough and a little out the other side, then just a little to the right. This brings us to the Pinwheel Galaxy, which is quite big and easy to see galaxy. It’s a lot closer to us than the Whirlpool Galaxy making it easier to see those spiral arms, despite the fact that this galaxy is less even and a little messier than the Whirlpool is. Taking a closer look with a bigger binoculars, and it’s very clearly a spiral galaxy. Modern binoculars can give you a better view, a clearer view, than some of the large telescopes that were used in the dawn of telescopic astronomy, back in the 17 and 1800s. Technology has come a long way and that is reflected in small binoculars and small telescopes, almost as much as it is in the big ones. Of course, the bleeding edge of technology is focused on the larger telescopes, but small telescopes and binoculars are incrementally improving over time as well,

As I mentioned above, in Stellarium you need to click on something in order to take a closer look, in the real sky you can just point your binoculars in a given direction. With Sagittarius visible just above the southern horizon early in the evening, and you might be able to see Antares in Scorpius as well, we know where to look to see the core of the Milky Way. Higher in the sky, the Summer Triangle marks where we need to look for the arm of the galaxy stretching across the sky. In the real sky, you cna just look that way with your binoculars, have a bit of a look around and you are very likely to see some deep sky objects. Luckily there is an asteroid named Isis, drifting between us and the core of the galaxy on the chosen night, so this gives us a starting point. Isis itself isn’t quite visible even with binoculars, but the fuzzy glow of the Milky Way is. Just a little above the horizon, roughly in the middle of the brighter region, you should begin to see some of the colourful nebulas around the core of the Milky Way, the Trifid Nebula, one of my favourites, is there if a bit faintly. Looking through the glow of light pollution and reasonably close to the horizon does make things tougher to see, but as we allow or gaze to drift up along the Milky Way, there are fields of stars, more nebulae and clusters of stars to be seen. You can essentially follow the glow of the Milky Way, to be almost guaranteed see more deep sky objects. Along the way we run across the Snowglobe Nebula, a planetary nebula, with it’s distinct round shape visible just with binoculars, though it does look a little small even with bigger binoculars. It would no doubt look more impressive through a telescope, there are some deep sky objects that are too small or too distant for mere binoculars, but this one is at least on the edge of visibility. We are continuing up towards the top of the Summer Triangle in the Milky Way, taking a kind of zigzag path up and down. This may be easier in real life, following the glow across the sky, if you begin to drift away from the Milky Way you may notice the background fuzziness fading away, which is a good hint to recalibrate your view. As we come up to the top of the Summer triangle, we begin to see some of the big regions of nebulosity. We can see the Inchworm Cluster and the Cooling Tower Cluster, both in the Sadr Region of nebulosity in Cygnus, close to one of the Swans wings. Moving along the path of the Milky Way brings us to the big bright North America Nebula and Pelican Nebula, still in Cygnus but closer to the tail star Deneb. With deep sky objects labelled, it’s clear that there’s a lot of deep sky objects that we can’t see, but of course through actual binoculars you wouldn’t know. Even as we move out towards the edge of Milky Way which is less dense, less full of stuff, there are still various bright regions and clusters of stars. All the same, you can see that there is definitely a drop-off if you move away from the Milky Way, the colour definitely fades, the sky gets less bright, as long as you’re looking into the Milky Way you could see some fuzziness, even if it’s not fuzziness you’d initially recognise as a nebula. Even as we come down to Cassiopeia, close to the outer edge, of the Milky Way, there’s still colourful nebulae to be seen, even with binoculars.

We’re going to say looking East as we move forward towards the morning. We will stick to quite early in the morning, just to be safe, we don’t want to look too close to the Sun even if we’re only using binoculars. This brings Jupiter into view. Just as with a telescope, it’s a good idea to look at Jupiter over the course of a few days, to give the moons a chance to move into view. Even with the smallest telescope available here, you may just about see a bulge at the edge of the disc of the planet, one of Jupiter’s moons, and if conditions are perfect, a moon may be visible completely separated out to the side of the planet. The 6 by 30s are the smallest form simulated by Stellarium, but there are, of course other binoculars in real life that would be even smaller, too small to show you those kinds of details. If your binoculars are built to get a closer look at an opera from high box seats, they won’t give you the level of magnification seen here. Moving up to the larger 25 by 141s and we can see three moons of Jupiter, clearly visible through binoculars. Granter, these are binoculars that would require a tripod to hold, but still, and you could get binoculars even larger than this in real life. As an example of something that doesn’t look good, we’ll very quickly take a look at Mars. Mars is of course much closer to us than Jupiter or Saturn, but the moons around Mars are much smaller, so small that they’re going to be out of view even with a very big binoculars. You can see some detail on the surface of Mars with a medium to large telescope, but even the largest binoculars we have here isn’t showing us that. Despite the fact that Mars is closer to us than Saturn or Jupiter, its moons are too small for us to see. Moving a little higher in the sky we have the Pleiades or the Seven Sisters, a particularly good target for binoculars, even smaller binoculars can give you a wonderful view of all Seven Sisters, with some of the associated smaller stars and nebulosity visible as well.

All of the above is based on what you could see from a city. I’m sure you can imagine how much nicer that must look if you are in the countryside without the extra light pollution, and how much more you could see. I may do a binocular oriented video for Dark Skies in the future, and if you want to see it, the best way is to subscribe to this website, my YouTube channel, or both. You can alos like this article, the video, or both if you enjoyed them. Most importantly, I hope you get to test out some binoculars soon, and that I see you back here next time.