Sky & Telescope contributing editor Matt Wedel wrote about this experience while sitting under the night sky in a big bino-chair at the Three Rivers Foundation Messier Marathon, in his blog: https://10minuteastronomy.wordpress.com/2017/03/28/deep-in-the-dark-of-texas-the-three-rivers-foundation-messier-marathon/
He wrote:
“It was another Fujinon binocular that would provide the most memorable views of the evening: the 25×150 motorized bino chair.” ….. “Sunday night I hopped in the big chair, Gary got the binos adjusted, and I was off.”
“In a word – WOW. I have been fortunate to get to observe with a lot of big telescopes, but I am not exaggerating when I say that using that bino chair was my favorite observing, ever. I just sat there comfortably in a padded chair and drove myself around the sky with the joystick, while enjoying hands-down the brightest, most immersive, most enjoyable views of the night sky that I have ever had. Six inches is a lot of light-gathering per eye. I don’t know the AFOV of the eyepieces but it is wide. It’s hard for me to even believe that the magnification was only 25x – everything subjectively seemed much bigger, because it was so much brighter and more detailed than I am used to. When I was cruising over to look at the Double Cluster, I kept getting distracted by all of the little open clusters that dot the Milky Way in and around Cassiopeia (I was coming in from the north). M78, near Orion, was so big and bright that at first I thought I had the wrong object.”
“In summation, observing with the Fujinon bino chair was a transformative experience – it changed my perspective on what observing could BE.”
Leave a Reply