What's an amatuer astronomer to do when the stars aren't out?
How about a little trip to look at telescopes?
Saturday I drove out to Riders hobby shop to take another look at a Vixen binocular telescope. It's two telecopes attached together. It's high priced for some buyers out there and doesn't even come with a tripod at 900 dollars. Also that is a pretty low price compared to the prices I've seen on the net.
What do you get for 900? Two 80mm achromatic telescopes that have an internal barlow lens that increases the focal length to 900mm. So the binoviewisnt wide field like most short focal length scopes or binoculars. It's a compromise but can give usable powers in the 75 power range which will show some close views of the moon. The 3d effect you get from using a binocular configuration is lauded by many who have looked through ninocular telescopes.
But keep in mind an achromatic has color correction but not perfect color correction and may show some purple haze around bright objects. To get rid of that you need an apochromatic system or apo refractor and those are really pricey. Vixen makes a larger 125mm binoscope that is an apo and has higher quality, but it's in the 3000 dollar range.
Here's a picture of the lower end 80mm Vixen at Ridersin Ypsilanti Michigan.
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