Newsgroup: it.scienza.astronomia
Titolo: Binostarparty report

Ecco il mio contributo al thread.
Scusatemi per la scelta della lingua, ma il tempo e' tiranno...
Ormai e' molto che mi ripropongo di apparire attivamente qui, ma non
riesco a farlo che saltuariamente: speriamo bene.
Hi all.
Last week-end the 2nd edition of the Italian bino-starparty has taken
place near Rome.
Despite the terrible weather forecast many people went to the party
(me too), and we were lucky: the weather was fine, despite few rain
during the talk of my CNR colleagues about their new space telescope
project.
The bino-starparty was organized for bino-observers, but all kind of
instruments were welcome. Many amazing observations and side-by-side
comparison were done.
It was impossible to write all in few words, so I&#8217;ll focus on
the more exciting stuff.
Finally I tried the Canon IS binoculars! What a view! I didn&#8217;t
believe to my eyes! The 18x50IS is wonderful on the night sky! If you
don&#8217;t try you can image how much deep-sky is visible at 18x
through the &#8220;small&#8221; 50mm (fully multicoated, I guess)
objectives, when you block the jiggles. No comparison with similar
sized 10x50 binoculars, nor with the bigger Russian whatever-x70mm!
I&#8217;ll buy them as soon as my budget make it possible&#8230;
(well, I&#8217;ve to do a side-by-side comparison with competitor
models before, but due to their cost I&#8217;ve very muuuuch time to
do: I hope that on the next binostarparty some Fuji IS owner will
come). I tested the 10x30IS too, but they weren&#8217;t so exciting
;(( What a pity, because their price and size and weight are very
nice! The 10x30IS is fine for daytime observations, though.
 
Daytime observation of a very special star were done: the Sun. Many
bino- and not bino- instruments were used. Due to poor seeing
conditions no side-by-side comparisons were done: almost all
instrument give very similar images, but our Sun is always very cool.
Besides Astrosolar white light observations, some H-alpha instruments
were on the field: a 40mm Coronado mounted on a small refractor and a
Cromixsun built by Lugli (0.5A bandpass was choosed) mounted on a
medium refractor (90mm f/11, I guess). The prominences and other
similar features on the Sun were spectacular in both. On the Cromixsun
you can see much more details on the solar disk, not only on the
border. Like IS binos, this stuff too is very expensive, you know
;-(((
Last but not least binoscopes and binoviewers come. There were a
Fujinon 25x150, the beautiful Baader Planetarium binoviewer, and many
Astromeccanica&#8217;s binoscopes owned by different guys: Helios
(150mm f/5), Takahashi FS102 (fluorite 102mm f/8), Borg 125ED (125mm
f/6.7), Vixen ED114SS (114mm f/5.8), Intes Maksutov (150mm f/12). For
deep-sky I concentrated on the Helios, Fujinon, and a Meade LX50
SC12&#8221;, while for planets observations I used Taka and Intes maks
(both a single MK67 with binoviewer and MK66 binoscope).
Binoscoping in the Helios was an unforgettable experience: we used
both 30mm widescan2 (25x with 82ş AFOV) and Meade UWA6.7 (112x, again
at 82ş) with and without O3 interferential filters. The full
unvignetted view through such eyepieces makes the comparison with the
Fuji uneven. Astigmatic users appreciated very much the comfort of low
power observations with eyeglasses, where the big exit pupil make them
very useful. When we observed Andromeda was late night and it was at
the zenith, so the Fuji was unable to offer neck-comfortable views.
Something that never tired me is to say over and over again to try a
binoscope/bigbino with a single eyes: you can get an idea of how much
you can gain from it. Different people have different gains: for me
the overall improvement is from two to three. On M42: with both eyes
it size doubles or more, and an incredible number of subtle features
appears. For comparison purposes we observed the same objects in the
Meade SC 12&#8221;. The 150&#8217;s bino views showed almost the same
details of the single eye 12&#8221; views.
Solar system observations (we didn&#8217;t true high resolution
because of not sufficiently good seeing) were done in the Taka
binoscope with Lanthanum 2.5mm (330x) and the Intes 150mm maks (used
with many eyepieces, from 200x to 350x) . Both an  Astromeccanica
Intes binoscope and a standard Intes instrument (alone or with Baader
binoviewer) were used. Due to high luminosity, binoviewers get good
images unlike the case of deep-sky objects. Saturn and Jupiter (yes,
we remained on the field until early morning!) simply have to be
observed with both eyes, to be fully appreciated.
I would thank very much the owners of these instruments that leave me
try, and apologize with owners of instruments I didn&#8217;t write
about (the asam club among others).
You can find some photos of the previous edition (and as soon as
possible of the last one, I think) on the websites:
http://www.asam.da.ru
 (click on &#8220;binostarparty&#8221;)
http://www.astromeccanica.it
 (click on &#8220;about us&#8221;)
Clear skies with both eyes,
;David
PS this report is posted (not crossposted) on Telescopes, binoscopes,
binocularastronomy yahoo groups and sci.astro.amateur,
it.scienza.astronomia usenet (google) groups.
v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v 
Davide Del Vento, space scientist
(Ph.D in Physic on progress)
http://www.astromeccanica.it
 
Italian High Quality Astro-Products 
v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v^v

riesco a farlo che saltuariamente: speriamo bene.
Ciao Davide,
anche Giorgio sta preparando un resoconto.
Conto di ripostarlo qui, ovviamente in italiano ;)
Saluti,
Fabio