Celestron Cometron vs Nikon Monarch 5

For 50mm solar filters (which would also work on smaller binoculars, just tape them), I'll recommend Rainbow Symphony or Daystar Filters. Both are reputable in the solar observing space.

I'm an avid outdoorsman and have been wanting to get into bird watching, hunting, and just general exploring/tracking of animals. I have never had a good set of binos but have had a couple of \~$30 ones. My dad knew I was looking to get a good pair and he did a bunch of research which landed him on the Monarch 5.

In these, I sometimes had to hold the binocular further AWAY, otherwise there was this "kidney-beaning" effect there the outer edge would just be black. It was rather difficult to hold them just-right to get a good image. Perhaps that might work okay for eyeglasses wearers, because the eye relief is further back. For me it was a bit difficult to use

It's especially important for short sighted people like myself because our eyeglasses add an additional optical element to the system, considerably extending its length (an alternative is to remove the glasses, but it is less convenient and one loses correction for astigmatism). I found this pair's eye relief more than sufficient for my prescription (which is close to -4.5). Lengthy viewing does not cause any eye strain

I'd been wanting a pair of 7x50 binoculars for a while but didn't want to spend hundreds of dollars since they wouldn't be my primary binoculars. I own a couple of Celestron telescopes and knew I could get a decent 7x50 binocular from them. They are very good for the money: well-built, good lenses, pretty light weight. I specifically wanted 7x magnification because that minimizes image shake when holding them by hand

Viewing the Orion region with either binocular is an inspiring experience, but more so with the Bushnell’s larger FOV. Image brightness of the Nikon and the Bushnell, as judged by the ability to see faint stars in the Orion region, is the same. Unless the Nikon name, lower weight, compactness and close focus are over-riding considerations, the Bushnell, at 30% of the prize of the Nikon, is the much better deal.

These binoculars are great for hand held night sky viewing, the 50mm objective lenses allow plenty of light to be collected and combined with the 7X provide a wide field of view. The magnification may seem a bit underwhelming, but I've found that while my 10x50 produce a lot of hand held jitter when trying to view the night sky, these 7x50 provide reasonable magnification while making it much easier to obtain a stable image. If you want to use a more powerful pair of binoculars for astronomy, you really would want a tripod mounted setup. The moon doesn't fill much more than a quarter of the view, but the details are nice and sharp

It's a personal thing for me about the 8.2 ft close focus distance. Caps are a minor, physical problem with the binocular accessories! Bino's themselves are worth every penny!