Many people do not think of using a pair of binoculars for astronomy, and yet almost everyone owns a pair or can borrow a pair. And when you really think about it, a pair of binoculars is nothing less than two refractor telescopes held together with a hinge. The instruments most people are familiar with are rather low magnification, somewhere between 6 and 10 power, but that is actually a good thing when it comes to hand-holding a pair of binoculars. It is also usually pretty affordable to get an entry level pair of binoculars, so most people can go out an afford a pair if you don’t have some already.

So why do they do so well for astronomy? Well, they perform the function of a telescope, which contrary to popular believe is not to magnify, but rather to gather more light. The lenses at the front of a telescope (or binoculars in this case) gather more light than your eyes can which enables you to see fainter things than you ever could with your eyes alone. And the larger the diameter, aka the aperture, of the lenses the more light they gather and the fainter the objects you can see.

So, how do you get started and what can you see? Well, the first thing you need to do is get a pair of binocular on hand, my personal recommendation is a 7×50 pair or a 10×50 pair, but I wouldn’t go larger than that in either magnification or aperture because they just get too heavy to hold without a tripod (though, I heavily recommend a tripod!). Once you have them, start with using them during the day to observe distant objects so that you can get familiar with what using them feels like. Then pick something easy, like the Moon. You will see more detail in the Moon than you ever have with the unaided eye, and if you look when the Moon is not full (which I recommend) you will see mountains and craters in sharp contrast to the shadows they cast. You should also be able to faintly see the unlit part of the Moon due to the light from Earth shining back on it.

Once you have gotten comfortable with this, you can start hunting for fainter objects. One of my favorite things to do is to just scan the Milky Way during the Summer months and see how many objects I can pick out. You can see many of the brighter nebulae and star clusters with a decent pair of binoculars and during the Fall and Winter months you have access to the Great Andromeda galaxy and the Great Orion nebula which are simply fantastic binocular objects.

Get or print yourself a star chart and a planisphere to start hunting down objects and constellations, I highly recommend you do this the old fashioned way since it forces you to become more familiar with the sky. I will have another article later about how to navigate the night sky and start finding objects.

As mentioned earlier in this article, I recommend getting yourself a tripod and a tripod adapter for your binoculars. This really elevates the experience since you will no longer be relying on your arms to hold them steady and truly turns your binoculars into a telescope. With your steady binoculars, you should be able to pick out fainter objects, and if you chose 10x pair you should be able to pretty easily pick out Jupiter’s 4 largest moons and see an indication of Saturn’s rings when they are visible (now might not be a good time since they are almost edge on to us)

The addition of a tripod also gives you an opportunity to use your binoculars for sketching. I will have an article out soon about sketching at a telescope, but it is one of the most satisfying ways that you can connect with the night sky. Deep sky sketching (such as galaxies and nebulae) takes a good mount of practice and patience, but a great place to start is by noting the positions of Jupiter’s moons, or representing the crescent shapes of our own Moon or Venus as it goes around the Sun.

Binoculars are a great first entry into astronomy, not only for the reasons listed above, but also because they work great for helping you find things. Their wide field of view and increased light gather ability will allow you to locate objects so you know where to point your telescope if and when you get one. My binoculars come out with me every night I have my telescope out, and sometimes I don’t even get the scope out and just roll with the binos!