Like Tony, I have used 7*50 for the last 36 years, and I agree with him about field-of-view. But it also depends on what you want to see (in addition to faint magnitudes) I have bought an AutoStar-equipped Meade scope, because I want to spend my time finding and observing the satellites, instead of predictions, notes, star maps... and the star fields where the satellite is expected. If you want to "hop" between many geostationaries in a short time, or observe flashing behaviour without having problems with tracking, or find satellites that have maneuvred by scanning the orbit plane, or satellites that are faint for long periods between flashes, you may make the same choice. /Björn ----- Original Message ----- > >being rather newbie in this "business" - which optical device is best > >suited for observing satellites in particular those with "invisible" > >magnitudos (> 6) - any telescopes with special mounts on the market?? > It all depends how faint you want to go Jorg. I have for the last 16 years > used 7x50 binoculars. If you use binoculars of bigger aperture or magnification > you will need to mount them. If you want to be able to see the geo satellites , larger > apertures are required and one needs to use a telescope of 20cm aperture like > Mike McCants reported today on the list. You use it at its lowest possible magnification, so > as to get as large a field of view as possible. A 1 degree field of view is required ----------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from SeeSat-L, send a message with 'unsubscribe' in the SUBJECT to SeeSat-L-request@satobs.org List archived at http://www.satobs.org/seesat/seesatindex.html
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