Finder for a bino

[preeti]

Hi Guys,

I am new to astronomy and still exploring how to use a bino to view the night sky , but rains are not helping much these days ..

Now this may be a stupid question, but I wanted to check if Binoculars can be used together with a finder instrument which I can connect to an application like Stellarium on laptop or iPhone and then use it to guide my bino (mounted on a tripod) to the object of my interest by pointing to the object in stellarium?

This will make my life much easier as now when I look up in the sky thru my bino i just move here n there spotting stars, but there is nto way for me to know which star is it that I am currently looking at ..

thanks
Preeti

[Gary]

I assume your big binocular is attached to a tripod. Here are a few options:

(1) Attach a laser pointer and aligned it with you bino. Best example is how Clifford uses one with his big bino.

(2) Attach a small light weight zero/red-dot finder and align it with your bino.

(3) Attach your iphone running a planetarium app to a holder and fix it onto your bino setup. Not as accurate as (1) and (2)

(4) Learn how to star hop. In Singapore, fortunately and unfortunately, there will not be so many stars visible at one time to confuse observers. LOL. So start with the brightest stars as landmarks. Learn from Stellarium what are the interesting objects near these bright stars and their relative positioning to these bright landmark stars.

(5) Get a lower mag, bigger fov and lighter hand held bino to familiarise yourself with binocular astronomy first.

[cloud_cover]

Hi Preeti,
Unless you're mounting your binos, don't really bother with a finder: you will find it only gets in the way of hand-holding.
If you're mounting your binos, then you'll find about the only thing able to give an appreciably larger FOV is a unity finder, that, is, a red dot or Telrad.
If you're hand-holding, then a good technique is to center your gaze (with eyes forward) on the object you're trying to find, then raising the binos to your eyes. This should land you near the object, since the FOV for most binos is so large.
One way to learn star-hopping is to bring out Skysafari or Stellarium and zoom so that each screen roughly corresponds to the angular FOV of your Binos. This gives you an idea what to see in a given view and if you're star-hopping what the landmarks are.
I find in a 10x50 that Mag 6 stars are the limit visually in Singapore so tweak your program to show up to those stars Try to practice around bright stars first (such as the Orion Constellation, Peliades etc etc) before going for more obscure targets. This gets you used to the view in a bino
By the way, M42 and M45 are very nice in a 10x50

[Canopus Lim]

It is not necessary to have a finder for a binoculars because its Field of View is already very wide. You can use a iPhone with astronomy app that allows compass and inclination. 'Point' the iPhone towards a bright star or planet and from there the astronomy app will tell you which star/ planet it is. Once you know that star, learn to use your binoculars to point towards it and from there look for other dimmer stars. Soon you will get the hang of it, and you will be able to identify constellations using binoculars; unfortunately, it is hard to see all the stars in constellations with naked eye due to light pollution.

Once you have learnt how to identify the bright stars followed by its respective constellations, then learn to find the brighter star clusters (hint those with 'M' designation) and followed by globular clusters and nebulae..

For planets, with a 10x50 binoculars you will be able to see Jupiter and Saturn as a 'disc', unlike a star. If you are able to hold your hands steady, you should be able to see the 4 moons of Jupiter with your binoculars.

Happy hunting.