Ease Your Pain Setting Up
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Binoculars to Telescope
Camera to Telescope
Telescope to Telescope
What are you holding on to?
binohandle science and technology
Where Compare was Reborn
Explore The Skies
Climbing the mountain. An excellent home observatory is for a lucky few. Transportation to darker skies and to an ideal site is a dream come true for observers of the sky, day and night. How do they do it? It hasn't been easy.
Bino-Handle is here to help!
Lift and mount your telescope safely and FAR easier. What about transport of the telescope?
An all-in-one system: Bino-Handle add Patent pending Chair Fold. With the world's lightest 7 lb. positional chair that disassembles flat as a board, the only vertical handle on the market to greatly assist in mounting any heavy telescope, add your bolt-on binoculars (most have a 1/4-20 thread) to the rear section of Bino-Handle, then in just seconds, add the ability to attach Bino-Handle back to the flattened chair strapped atop the telescope's case for transport. Bino-Handle IS YOUR FINDER. Or use the attached Rigel finder mount that is bolted on not taped, plus add your smartphone to Bino-Handle to use smartphone sky apps with your telescope or clip on your star chart.
Bino-Handle Base based on your preferances. Attach with stainless thumb screws or permanently bolt on your base. Now add a second rings to the telescope to add a forward position for even more leverage. Remove the loose ring and base and rotate to the back ring for greater access to binos and balance telescope further forward.
See Products Page.
Bino-Handle Guide
How about Guide scope installation in 8 seconds? Simply attach Guide on your Guide scope and have the ability to mount it to your imaging scope in no time. Perfect alignment and no fuss and no worries. Even mount Guide to your mount to mount your camera. Guide your way to faster imaging.*
Bino-Handle Mask
UV resistance and ultra durable aperture masks for the front of your telescope. All masks come exclusively with our Mega Flat coating process. Reduce your aperture for sharper views and safe solar applications with proper solar filter (not included) Viewing the planets also will benefit as longer f-ratio and removing the optic edge. (Depending on seeing conditions. ) Also available for installation of Baader Visual solar film to safely view the sun. Permanently and safely installed in a Mask housing. See the sun today!
Bino-Handle Ring Handle
Get a comfortable grip at the back of the telescope. Patent pending push on installation and removal to store telescope back in its case. Ring Handle makes a larger refractor telescope come to life as you push it into position for the first time.
Bino Box Solar Filter
For binocular telescopes. View the sun correct image with both eyes using Bino Box. Bino Box uses Baader Visual solar film to safely view the sun. Bino Box pushes firmly in place and will never come off until you want. Sun alignment is easy sighting through the filter between each binocular. Its box design rises above the optics blocking the sun light from the user for vastly improved views.
Bino-Handle Blind Fold
Home observatory INSIDE your home. Our push and fold into place shield covers and insulates your home sliding patio door. Allowing you to position a small sized telescope through the shield still sealed from the outside elements. A new way to observe, with even a fraction of the sky available, feeling around the sky is quite a feeling, and fun! Patent pending.
Bino-Handle Mega Flat Coatings
We have small windows to the universe through our telescopes. No matter how big a telescope you may have seen being lugged around, and before Bino-Handle, no less, its insignificant size becomes obvious in the big outdoors. Why not make it the best view it can have? By coating dew shields and other components with our contrast-boosting Mega Flat process, you'll see your shine disappear!
Bino-Handle Horizontal Hold
From the first eyepiece created came the problem of storing it while still using it. Place your three most used eyepieces horizontally in Horizontal Hold and swap out with the fourth in the telescope. Two side panels are removed to access the holder which can be used as the seat on Chair Fold. Bino-Handle is attached to Horizontal Hold for transport. By increasing the surface area three fold to the cold of space raining down, the eyepieces maintain ambient temperature and will never risk banging into one of the others or fingers touching. Even store away your phone and favorite insulated beverage. Time to get horizontal!
Bino-Handle Bino Tray
Replace your mount to tripod connecting rod with a 18-8 Stainless Rod (or equivalent) and flip your existing tripod tray (plus adapters per your mount) for safer storage, more stability, less vibration, and greater access for eyepieces. Binoculars can also be stored above smaller eyepieces to keep them at ambient temperature. And finally attach battery inside tripod leg out of the way of the telescope!
Bino-Handle Focus Saver
Simply use Focus Saver and swap that focuser out to another telescope. Now I have two focusers! And Focus Saver does more than look pretty unlike other plugs. Focus Saver has a filtered end so you can have it open to super cool the telescope for use, or install the filtered desiccant cap to seal the telescope but still allow airflow when stored away. Also important is the ability to remove the focuser to use telescope covers that may snag or stretch the expensive materials. The Focus Saver filter inside will hang down when reinstalling the focuser. Slide the focuser into place while removing the filtered piece to keep anything from going inside the telescope. Done! With Focuser Saver you can count on the inside of your telescope staying new. The Starlight caps are good jewelry holders.
Bino-Handle View
Hand one over to someone you love. Frame the night sky with the View. Simply hold it up to your part of the sky of choice and focus only on that part of the sky. See something new!
Bino-Handle Pod
Mount your 1/4-20 tapped telescope or binocular telescope to a push-to Tele Vue Pod mount using Bino-Handle Pod to Manfrotto. Finally view the zenith with this amazing mount! Easy click on mounting of multiple telescope use.
Tripod Rebuilds
Send your tripod to Bino-Handle. Or its main parts without its tubing in a large bubble mailer, for a long over due overhaul. New 304 stainless steel tubes, powdercoatings, lube. Many tripods that come with mounts are not available to purchase separately, or expensive! Rebuild it with beefier tubing, more durable coatings, service its metal stays which plague these tripods and make it better than new.
Bino-Handle Smart Hold
Take better smart phone images! Our weatherproof bubble label is the perfect platform for your smart phone astronomy. Excellent placement hand held finger hold and pivot. No slip grip won't slide off surfaces. A must for accuracy using smart gloves! (Smart gloves have glove finger material that can work like bare finger touch on smart phone screens.) For Smart Hold placement on your smart phone, pick up your phone. Turn your hand and see where your index or other finger is placed. Apply Smart Hold to the phone below, not under, the nail of that finger. You'll be taking better pics with your phone in no time!
Bino-Handle Service!
We will install focusers for you, your own custom Bino-Handle, Mega-Flat process your dew shield and any other parts requested (at least 1 week allowed to off-gas before assembly) test and wax the telescope.
See Products Page
Telescopes
High quality telescopes owned/sold through the years which are a joy to own.
Coronado Personal Solar Telescope
Denkmeier Spectrum 60mm
Galileoscope
Altair 60mm ED SFPL-53
Celestron AstroMaster 70mm
Lunt 80mm Solar Telescope DS/FT
Lunt 80mm ED
Tele Vue 85mm
Lunt 102mm ED
Explore Scientific AR102
Meade DS series Costco
Orion Apex 127mm
Orion BT 100 90 degree Semi Apo
Barska BT 100 45 degree Semi Apo
Explore Scientific 127mm FCD1
Explore Scientific 127mm FCD100 FT
Skywatcher Sky Max 150mm
Celestron 8SE
Celestron C14A
Lunt Engineering 152mm ED
Istar Phoenix 204mm
Binoculars
High quality binoculars owned/sold that are a joy to own.
Orion 2x54mm
Zen Ray 8x43 ED
Astromania Binoviewer
3D Astronomy SpaceWalker 8x42
Denkmeier Binotron 27/A45
Canon IS 10x42 L
Canon IS 18x50
Oberwerk 20x90
Celestron 15x70
Celestron Binoviewer
Cobiz 1025
Fujinon 7x50 FMTSX
Fujinon 16x70 FMTSX
Images
Exposure times are short but varied. Why state 90 Seconds of Fun? Because they are processed in 90 seconds! Use your smart phone camera editing.
Posted are some of the better images from nights of comparison observing to the eyepiece. For instance the Flame Nebula beside the Horsehead nebula really helped see these two objects in the eyepiece and pick out details.
The sun shot is the first published smart phone image to my knowledge and it has been tough but rewarding getting good phone images over the years. All images processed via smart phone's camera.
Media
Astronomy equipment is sacred. Astronomy knowledge is solid gold. Let's read so many wonderful books about our Universe together and take every moment to heart with tools to do so. Shown are some of my favorite books and authors. A cure-all for aperture fever (wanting ever bigger telescope) and location deprivation (bad seeing, cloudy or light polluted home) knowledge of astronomical phenomenon provides enormous insight foremost of which no telescope or location matters more than the joy of the hobby.
Optics/Cleaning
For observing you really need the best optics you can get. Imaging, this doesn't really matter much. Even unfocusing of the image can be required. A better mount helps. Although you do need longer focal length for planets. And aperture suited to your target. You can fix images on the computer.
So it's much better to have a small telescope with the best optics vs. a larger telescope with less performing optics. While few can afford, ideally you would have the larger telescope with the best optics. I opted for nine telescopes instead for the same price for different situations and targets that may best that best telescope for one reason. (i.e., airline portability, ease of use, wider field of view, lower priced larger optics, ergonomics, economics, speed, multiple scope use on same target, multiple bandwidth use for solar -- Calcium, Sodium, Magnesium, H-a, Visual)
Cleaning optics has been made into a mess online. It's really important and has to be done often if you use all your tools. That's what a telescope is a tool. Same with eyepieces.
Clean optics in a well-ventilated area. Each cleaning it is important to put hot breath from your lungs each pass onto the optics then clean to loosen material. Stuff gets on the optics (not dust, light dust is unavoidable) it needs to come off.
If you're in the field and something major has gotten on the optics stop and put away. If you have more get out another. If you are cleaning optics it is to be indoors with a bottle of room temperature Windex filled 1/5th of the bottle and the other 4/5ths filled with room temperature filtered tap water. This will clean the optics. For small jobs use q tips. For big jobs use make-up cotton pads. You are wetting the q tip or pad. You're pulling off gunk so only move the tip or pad its own surface area across the optics. Merely touching the optic with the q tip or pad, not pressing. Throw and grab another. For just one larger refractor lens or handfull of plossl eyepieces you might need the whole bag of pads or container of q tips. When things are almost dry, come through with more pads or q tips wetted with room temperature denatured alcohol. Acetone is best for eyepieces. Acetone is hard on some optics. Never use acetone on binoculars. Continue to pull the tip or pad lightly across the area of the pad or q tip can cover and throw it out and grab another. If things are not looking just perfect, there is still stuff on the optic. Start over. If in doubt - Use new everything so no doubt as to where things have been.
That's it!
Binoculars
Amazing tool, correct image, but difficult to use. 8x power is all that can be expected to be used by hand and few provide comfort for viewing through them. Many advise binoculars as a first astronomy purchase. It's a poor choice. Purchase a telescope and then learn how good binoculars can be.
Telescopes
Can't have too many! Like binoculars as also a tool but has a strength and weaknesses. Conditions on Earth are rarely good enough to show you what your fine telescope can really do. The other weakness is having to purchase expensive amici diagonal to veiw correct orientation. A must. Lastly, a large telescope needed to really get to know an object in the sky is expensive, awkwardly heavy, and of course dreamed of! Bino-Handle solves probably all problems for both Binocular and Telescope.
About Comparative Observation
When someone asks you Observing? Or Imaging? The answer has to absolutely be:
Of course.
At times, use technology to its fullest when observing.* Mount two telescopes using a side-by-side mounting (ADM) on the same motorized mount. Attach a camera at the back of one telescope (Any DSLR) Attach a prism correct view diagonal on the other ($40) and add an eyepiece. Track and image an object 30 to 90 sec.
View that image dim on the camera view screen with non observing eye. Observing eye then views in the eyepiece and tries to find those image details. One can of course switch to the binoculars or a binoviewer. Third party 3D binoculars and eyepieces? Third party smart phone holder to image on your binoculars?
All to see objects in detail you have never seen!
The Future
Bino Handle as a complete system is obviously heading towards an ultimate incarnation as an all in one packaged telescope in one box. I like to call that a 'science shifter'. With science being humankind's most important endeavor, it is also important to understand what we desire today. It's not enough to make goods in many boxes. We require all the goods in one box. Telescope, mount, tripod, and yes even the chair. One day Bino-Handle, in perhaps a different form, will reach to every corner on Earth.
Hobby Care
Frustration comes with the hobby. It is overwhelming at times. Reading about superior products that are no longer made or a flippant remark made online. Malfunctioning equipment and failed attempts. Cherry picked better performing equipment. Staying out of direct light of the neighbors. The long haul of the road to remove yourself from this light. And weather. Always changing and can only predict two days in advance. It can all be enough to wonder why all the effort.
To immediately pull myself back I remember our time on Earth is a blink of an eye. And I think back through my history and ours. All the wonderous triumphs. And accepted defeats. That I don't even live in the best hemisphere for astronomy let alone all the city lights.
The most expensive or most exotic of equipment takes a back seat to a great dark steady sky. The most open mind triumphs.
Try your best and you will find astronomical glory always.
*Nothing compares to the view (hopefully correct) with your eye. REAL starlight hitting your brain. Bino view every chance you get.
For the Love of It
Combining what you are most interested in is a joy to be experienced. I've always loved riding my mountain bike and my best rides have been just being on the bike, mountain not included. Golf, while attempted by many is actually played by professionals. To learn your way around the course is the way I look at the game. Learning about yourself. The Earth. Even maps and your state traveling to different courses. Having another perspective on your astronomy or two is a great way to ground yourself when you leave Earth through your telescope. If you are really lucky you can combine all three of these interests at one location. At my main dark sky site there is golf on the property even biking and fishing that makes for a special day.
Clear and steady days and nights to you.
100% Satisfaction Guaranteed
All products rigorously tested and structurally warranted for life. Period.
The finest 6061 Aluminum construction will never rust, never let you down.
All (few) plastic components will wear in time, but are readily available conveniently located in your area. Nothing to order. No hassle. No worries.
Any barrier we could ever fear to build, drops for astronomy.
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