Last night I helped my nephew Andrew work on his scout badge for astronomy. He looked at and sketched the moon and Venus, which were setting fast after sundown. We also caught Saturn just before it set below a fence. Then Mars, which still had some detail -- Andrew pointed the 8-inch to Mars himself. The rest of the project was to identify some constellations, and bright stars within them, for which we used the planisphere and an atlas. We had trouble with the last one, Capricornus, since it is just at the edge of naked eye visibility. I had him use my 7x35 wide view binoculars to find it, first framing the view through some tree branches so he would know where to point the binoculars. Mission accomplished; he only needs to sketch the moon for the next three nights to complete the requirements.
Afterward I tried out a monopod I bought (used) using my 8x56 binoculars. I don't yet have the pan head, but even so it was a big improvement over handheld to steady the view. Not very comfortable to look high up but I could prop it on a wall or the table to get the angle needed. I'm asking for the pan head for Christmas so hopefully will have an efficient binocular viewing system soon.
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