Re: [Phys-L] astronomy binocular buying advice

[John Denker <jsd@av8n.com>]

On 05/04/2017 11:24 AM, Dan Beeker via Phys-l wrote:

> [...] there is a large segment of the population that does
> not believe “scientific" images are real. By using a simple optical
> system where the observer can see there is nothing but glass in the
> eye path the argument that something inside the black box
> (electronics?) caused the image is moot. And it says one doesn’t
> always need state of the art equipment to observe neat stuff.

Which is why I sequence binoculars before telescopes.  Advantages
include:
 -- immediacy
 -- interactivity
 -- more-or-less* undisputed reality
 -- portability
 -- additional daytime uses

  *Although there were folks in Galileo's day who refused to
   accept telescopic images as "real" or even credible evidence
   ... even though they could have calibrated them against
   known terrestrial targets.

As with practically everything in science (and education more
broadly), where you start out is not the same as where you
want to end up.  Even if the goal is for everybody to be able
to set up and operate a computerized telescope, that's not my
idea of a good pedagogical starting point.

FWIW I don't even start with binoculars.  I start with naked
eye observations, including constellations, planets, et
cetera.

True story: Once upon a time, back in the days before GPS, I was at
a conference in New Orleans.  There was a dead spot in the schedule,
so some colleagues and I spent a day exploring the bayou country
south of town.  It was late.  We were tired.  At one point I said
to the driver, I think you made a wrong turn back there.  We're
going the wrong way.  He gasped, then asked how I could possibly
know that.  I said "That's Cassiopeia over there.  I suspect that
way is north."

He spent the next week calling me Mr. Cassiopeia Guy.

The point is, you don't need a computerized telescope, or even
binoculars or optics of any kind, to get some value from the
stars.

Basic star-finding skills feed into the next part of the
lesson plan, insofar as they tell you where to aim the
binoculars.  

True story: Once I was spending the summer at the Aspen Center
for Physics.  It's waaay up in the mountains, and it's easy to
get away from all light pollution, so it's great for amateur
astronomy.  I brought my telescope.  At the same time there
was a certain very smart very famous scientist there, who also
brought his telescope ... a super-fancy telescope, probably ten 
times more expensive than mine.  The first time we went out
together, we wanted to look at M7, the beautiful cluster in
Scorpius.  I manhandled my scope to point in the right general
direction and started looking at M7.  He went to work aligning
his polar axis and zeroing his setting circles.  He was about
one tenth of the way through with the process when he realized
that I already had the desired object in view, without doing any
kind of setup, without using (or even knowing) the coordinates
of the object.  He gasped, then asked how I could possibly do that.
I pointed to the sky and said it's right there, next to the tail
of the scorpion.  You can see it with the naked eye, if you know
where to look.  He said there are two kinds of astronomers.  He
came to it via mathematics then physics then astrophysics.  He
said I was the other kind, who came to it through H.A. Rey and
stargazing.

He had (until then) thought of M7 as an abstraction, as a catalog 
object with numerical coordinates ... as opposed to a physical 
object that you could point to.

  BTW don't expect to be able to see M7 with your naked eye
  unless the conditions are verrry good.

=================

The point of both stories is the same:  There is more to astronomy
than setting circles and catalogs and computerized telescopes.
There is value in being able to just look at the sky and understand
what you're seeing.