The Purchase

I purchased my Barska 15x70 binoculars as an impulse when I saw them advertised in a catalog. The price seemed pretty incredible at something like $60.

To be cautious, I checked out Barska on the web, and other than the fact that they made low priced binoculars, I didn't find anything terribly incriminating about them.

Troubles in Paradise

I set them aside, rather deflated. It was a major disappointment to have something that was almost great, but fell short. I lost interest.

A few times I got them out again to view a comet or two, and eventually realized that they were poorly aligned. That really disappointed me. Then I began to wonder, could the alignment be behind the focus problem?

Browsing the web, I ran across a review site where another person had the same alignment issue. He gave some instructions on how to fix the problem. Following his advice, I was able to get the alignment straightened out.

Unfortunately, alignment did nothing to fix the problem of poor focus in the left barrel.

Salvation Examining the Barska web site I discovered a contact number. Calling it I found that for a small fee, I could send the binoculars back and have them either fixed or replaced. I sent them in, and a few weeks later received a new pair. I couldn't complain about that. On the new pair, both barrels focused properly. That was the good news. The bad news is that this pair was also poorly aligned. But now I knew the solution to that problem. I went through the alignment procedure again, and now I have a great pair of binoculars for astronomy. A couple of comets later I can say I'm quite happy with the result. The ghostly comet 17P/Holmes was easily resolvable. The binoculars, for their size, are remarkably light. Even so, as I discussed in my binocular tutorial, the higher magnification of the Barskas (15x) makes them difficult to hand hold. I have to lean my arms against something when stargazing to see comfortably, and even that type of support makes viewing marginal.

I did make the simple L bracket for my tripod as shown in the binocular tutorial, and that helps significantly. It isn't that useful, however, when the object I want to watch is nearly straight up. I guess a lawn chair would be the best solution for that dilemma.

A Better Solution

For some time I considered making a parallelogram mount for these binoculars. Then I ran across these excellent Binocular Mirror Plans.

I followed the plans and ordered the recommended mirror and ended up with this handy unit.

I mount the base on my camera tripod, but sitting in on a table would work well also.

In use, the comfortable viewing angle of the binoculars never changes. To move in azimuth, rotate the base. To move in elevation, change the tilt of the mirror.