hi this is Graham from Jenham's Astro if you're new to astronomy and you decide
to buy a telescope you'll probably find quite quickly that the choice of models is overwhelming
should you buy a scope that looks like this or maybe one that looks more like this
or perhaps it should look like this so a lot of the videos on my channel are designed to help you
navigate between some of those choices but until now we haven't looked at an entirely different
path for getting into astronomy and that is to use a pair of binoculars
so in this video we're going to look at pieces of equipment
that will allow you to efficiently use quite a large set of binoculars to look at the night sky
so binoculars it's quite possible that you've got a pair lying around the house
so for example these are the ones that are in our kitchen these are 8 by 42 binoculars so they have
a 42 millimeter objective and a magnification of eight and they're ideal for taking out on walks
maybe looking at the birds very lightweight you can put it in a bag no problem and you can hold
a set of binoculars like this hand hold them for a long time and because they're lightweight
you can maintain a steady focus on the object that you're looking at but when you want to get into
using binoculars in the night time for looking at faint objects in the night sky then really
you want to get a larger aperture a larger size of lens than this sort of
binocular offers and before long the astronomy equipment options that come onto the table
can include items like this so this is a set of binoculars that have
70 millimeter objective lenses and this set produces magnification of 15 but also quite
commonly you'll find people using 80 millimeter objective lenses and sometimes even larger units
those are dedicated binoculars for astronomy and you can't hold them for very long you certainly
can't hold them and have a relaxed look at the night sky using handheld sort of way of operating
so in this video we're going to look at product from the orion company in the us here it is
it's pretty heavy and it's called the orion paragon plus binocular mount
so we're going to unbox it and put it together and see how you might use it to
allow you to comfortably use a heavier set of binoculars for looking at the night sky
okay so what's in the box we guessed it it's another box this is astronomy after all we
need a lot of packaging so inside that box is a box here we go let's open it up
and take a look
inside so a set of instructions now this really is pretty lightweight two sides of um
of paper and it covers two models of this product so orion offer a 53-79 model which
is the the mount and the tripod but in this case they offer a 53-76 model which is just
the the mount itself the parallelogram mount as they're called and this is what we're going
to look at today so the idea is if you buy this version you've already got a tripod
that's suitable to attach the mount on top of so we'll have a look at the instructions in a bit
and then try to turn it so you can see
opening up the box inside we've got some some polystyrene blocks
and then oh i've got a pretty heavy unit wrapped in a bag so
put the box to one side i can do that without taking myself out straight away this is
a pretty heavy piece of metal and let's take the bags off and see what's inside
okay so we have one bag there
and then there's some bubble wrap around this end of the product so just take that off
and then we can take a look at it okay so this uh is the power paragon plus parallelogram
binocular mount i've probably said that wrong but you get the idea and i'd say in terms of assembly
there's not going to be a great deal for us to do because it basically comes in one lump which
is which makes a refreshing change really so we're not going to need to do a great deal of um putting
together so at this end you can see there is a most of the weight is a counterweight which the
purpose which will become obvious when we put it onto a tripod and it is able to slide i think we
can see that we're going to be able to loosen off and slide that mount as with all counterweights
you need to be able to adjust the lever arm and then other than that look at the actual shape
you can see that it has this parallel parallelogram form to it
which we'll see how that works in a minute
at the end here i think if we loosen this off this is going to be the way that we're going to attach
the binocular
lots of knobs to tighten up and adjust come to that and then underneath here we can see
we've got a mounting point to put the unit onto a tripod okay so if we come a bit closer
this is intended to mount on a tripod like so and we'll come to that
and if we take a look underneath the base of the unit you can see hopefully if i hold it up
the camera will focus there you can see that there is a screw thread in the center of the
base here now quite clever feature here of the the mount in that as supplied out the box
this unit will thread onto a thread that is one quarter of an inch so that is one of the two
sizes of thread that you commonly get on photo tripods but because the area is the second size
then you have an option here to unscrew this fitting and then it takes this this adapter
here we go this adapter just comes out and then it reveals a larger 3/8 of an inch thread
so depending on the tripod that you have then you can use either of those
two arrangements to allow you to attach this orion mount onto your existing tripod
okay so here's my tripod uh it's got a 3/8 of an inch size thread so it's the larger of the
two possible sizes on top of the tripod here on this adapter plate and we'll see how we can attach
the orion mount so we're just going to mate up here with a thread in the bottom of the unit
and rotate like so
until it's tightened up
and then the unit is free to turn so nice and simple i think we saw before that you can
slide the counterweight clamp it back down and then there are a series of knobs
four of them in fact that allow you to tighten the mechanism now clearly at the moment i haven't got
any binoculars on so it's it's not in balance but we'll come to that next
seems pretty sturdy the finish is good it's got powder coated matte black paint
um yeah seems like a nice piece of kit
okay so we looked at this part already but it is the l-shaped bracket that the orion mount has
in order to allow you to attach your binoculars so i'm going to tighten that down and you'll see
that it has a captive thread here if i look at my particular binoculars you'll see in the center
they have there is a thread now it's a standard size now it should be noted that this as supplied
this type of binocular mount will not attach to binoculars that have a some of the 20 by 80s that
have a central bar running along here and then a sort of pillar mount so this is for mounting two
binoculars where there is a thread that is running along the center axis between the two barrels
so if we try to show you a little bit more closely all you're going to do
is attach the binoculars like so
and tighten it down
and then because we've got the additional weight of the binoculars we can
tighten this bolt here so that is it that is basically the the attachment
and we'll see in a minute how how this works as you move the binoculars around
but i guess it's probably worth noting that with this type of mount the binoculars and
their central gravity is above the point of rotation so you do need to maintain
this bolt here needs to be tight otherwise binoculars will flop about they're not
hanging they're not suspended as in some other mechanisms they are above the rotation point
right so now we've attached the binoculars all we need to do is to make sure that
we've got a good balance so as we've seen before you can adjust the counterweight
until the whole mount is basically balanced when the friction on these knobs uh is uh loose so
tighten this up and you're ready to go so the the orion mount is very smooth in operation
you can adjust the position of the binoculars the height of the binoculars
everything moves very gently and you can you can just tune how you want it to move with the four
knobs here and here and then it's just very simple if you want to
adjust the direction in which the binoculars are pointing you have to loosen off this knob here
adjust the angle and then tighten it down so for example we've got the object we're observing here
nice comfortable seat position and we can move the binoculars away if we want to get up or we could
rotate and adjust the mount everything is nice and smooth and one of the features
of this parallelogram type of mount is that if you've got the binoculars pointed
in a given direction then you can adjust the height of the binoculars
without adjusting the direction in which they're pointing so it's very helpful
perhaps you could be you could be observing an object and then you may be able to lower down
the mount perhaps for a child to see the object that you've lined up so it's nice and simple so
i would say um my only minor note really is um that this arrangement of having the
weight of the binoculars above this rotation means that you do need to make sure that you've got this
knob here it has to be tightened sufficiently to stop the binoculars drooping like this so
once you know that it's fine it's not a problem and then after that it really is a nice simple
piece of astro kit that will allow you to take the strain out of using heavy but very capable
binoculars like these for a prolonged period of time and i think it is definitely an option to
get into astronomy this way a lot of people prefer binocular astronomy it's quite relaxing you've got
a wide field of view with binoculars it's much easier to find objects you get a bright image
and it's quite a different experience obviously both of your eyes are seeing the object
quite a different experience to using a telescope and maybe you could pick yourself up star atlas
here's a very famous one turn left at orion and it could be all that you ever want simple astro
so i'd say that the orion paragon plus mount in the form that i've looked at here
where i've got my own tripod and i've just bought them out is a nice solid piece of kit
and i think it's good value for money so i hope it's been useful thanks for watching