Tonight I continued my exploring the use of the Orion 5376 Paragon-Plus Binocular Mount and got out the Celestron SkyMaster 15x70's. First thing I noticed was that they were a bit out of collimation, but I found a YouTube on doing the collimation and it turned out to be a very easy thing to do.

The night sky looked great though these binoculars and I was easily seeing stars approaching 10th magnitude as I followed what I was doing with Stellarium Mobile. The stars were nice pinpoints and I liked what I was seeing. By the way, my glasses are progressive, and for this, I have a pair that is not progressive, and that works best with viewing. Since I have astigmatism, I can't get nice pinpoints when not using my glasses. But I remember back when I was a teenager, more than half a century ago, looking at the night sky with an el cheapo 3 1/2 inch reflector from Edmond Scientific and at that time, I didn't have astigmatism and I still remember the impressive view of the stars. I wish I could see them that good now.

I also decided to do some comparison so I got out a spotting scope I have - a Celestron Regal 100mm, 540mm FL. Comes with a zoom 22x to 66x, actually 8mm to 24mm. But I substituted a Baader 24mm Hyperion which provides a 68 degree apparent field of view. The actual field of view was narrower than the 15x binoculars, but it provided a reasonable way to compare. Also with this scope and eyepiece, the stars looked perfect and it was a joy to look through.

In the way of comparison, the scope was a bit more sensitive to dim stars, but not by much. With a little math using the area of circles, the scope has an area of about 1.7x the area of one of the binocular lenses. But the binocular views with both eyes, and somewhere I read that using both eyes vs one is a 1.4x advantage. So you can see that the net result is very close. Plus, I was using a slightly higher magnification on the scope than the binoculars -- 22x vs 15x. And this also gave it a slight advantage.

Using the scope, I could see the companion star of Mintaka, the far right end of the belt of Orion. These stars are separated by 1 arc minute, and it was no problem separating them with the scope. A little harder with the binoculars.

Tried again to see the horse head nebula but couldn't see it with either the binoculars or the scope. And comparing to the dim stars in Stellarium, I was able to know exactly where it shoud be. Need the light gathering ability of a camera for that.

Now what I may try next is mounting the scope on the Paragon Mount. The scope doesn't exceed it's weight limit, and it would make viewing more convenient since I have to adjust my viewing heigth with the scope on a tripod when I aim higher or lower. Also, need to use a red dot finder since it is really hard to aim that scope where you want.

Tonight, my fun was interrupted by my noticing that stars were becoming dimmer and dimmer. When I looked up, the sky had managed to cloud up. It was perfectly clear when I started.

The UPS truck delivered it today, and the weather cooperated. I know this is not astrophotography, but it just made my observing a lot easier. Used it tonight with my 10x50 binoculars and what a difference to look through steady binoculars. Next, I will try it with the 15x70 that are so big and heavy that I have hardly ever used them.

Now I need to dig out the books I have on binocular objects to observe.

I tried resolving the Horse Head Nebula tonight, but at 10x, it was beyond my ability to see it with binoculars.

This time I tried using the modified Canon T2i that I bought from Craig a while back.
I used my all time favorite Celestron C8 SCT that I have added a crayford focus back to.
I setup the CGEM and had a nice clean PoleMaster alignment to work with.
I used the focus mask and had a really pretty, even, 6 point star.
I did a 2 star alignment and added 3 calibration stars to the mix.
I ran my exposures as follows.
ISO 800 (seems to be best for this camera)
Fixed f:/10 ( no reducer )
150 second exposure this time.
Processed in Canon Photo Professional and saved as a PNG
I opened that up in Photoshop and adjusted the white balanc ite and contrast.
This is what I got.
I need to run it through Topaz noise reduction.
:o)
Jim

This time I tried using the modified Canon T2i that I bought from Craig a while back.
I used my all time favorite Celestron C8 SCT that I have added a crayford focus back to.
I setup the CGEM and had a nice clean PoleMaster alignment to work with.
I used the focus mask and had a really pretty, even, 6 point star.
I did a 2 star alignment and added 3 calibration stars to the mix.
I ran my exposures as follows.
ISO 800 (seems to be best for this camera)
Fixed f:/10 ( no reducer )
150 second exposure this time.
Processed in Canon Photo Professional and saved as a PNG
I opened that up in Photoshop and adjusted the white balance and contrast.
This is what I got.
I need to run it through Topaz noise reduction.
:o)
Jim