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BINTEL Dobsonians in Stock
The Winter Solstice & WIN a BINTEL Beanie to keep your noggin warm
Vespera Observation Station on the way
Lagoon Nebula by BINTEL customer, Chi Cheung Chan, using his Sky-Watcher Esprit 150ED and QHY268M camera.
Winter Solstice
The Winter Solstice occurs at 7:13 pm on Tuesday, June 21, 2022
Solstice is due to the Earth's tilt, the Southern Hemisphere is pointed furthest away the from Sun during our orbit around it. It's the shortest day of year and the longest night in Australia and New Zealand. The long cool nights and the astronomical objects in the southern winter skies make this time of year a highlight for both visual observers and astrophotographers.
Image via Time and Date
As we've got a few months of what's shaping up to be a very cold weather ahead of us, we're giving away some BINTEL beanies to help you keep warm! To score, one simply post a selfie of yourself out observing or with your telescope on or around the Winter Solstice. You can send us one via email at sales@bintel.com.au, tag #bintel on Instagram or post to the Facebook Group from the link below. The Coolest* entries win.
BINTEL Dobsonian Telescopes in Stock!
It's been a wait due to the global supply chain issues, but we now have a limited number of BINTEL Dobsonian Telescopes in stock.
The BT302 (12"), BT252 (10") and the BT202 (8") are available
BINTEL BT202 8" Dobsonian Telescope
Dobsonians are no-frills, large "light buckets" and are some of the best value for money telescopes you can buy. You will get some magnificent views through these, especially with Jupiter and Saturn about to put on a show in the coming months. We'd recommend them for serious beginners or those after a second telescope to extend their discovery of the night sky.
Please note we are only keeping a few of these in our Sydney retail showroom due to space, so place call ahead 02 9518 7255 to make sure we have one in for you before making a trip to see us.
Vespera Observation Station on the way - $3299
The Vespera, the next model from Vaonis, the company who brought us the Stellina, is arriving around September or October.
Like the Stellina, the Vespera is a fully computerised astrophotography system that's controlled from your phone, tablet, or PC. You set the Vespera up, it aligns itself, tracks and then photographs the Solar System and deep-sky objects you want to capture. Simple as that.
The Vespera Observation Station by Vaonis
We were amazed at the images sent to us by our Stellina customers! Interestingly we found Australian Stellina owners seemed to be evenly divided between experienced astrophotographers who were after a no-nonsense way to capture the night sky and inexperienced beginners just getting into taking astro images.
Every single Stellina we could put our hands on was pre-sold before it arrived in Australia. Despite BINTEL selling dozens of them, we were sadly unable to provide one for everyone who was after one of these amazing astro gizmos.
BINTEL been able to secure significantly more Vespera telescopes than Stellina telescopes. Given their much lower price and greater portability we're also expecting to also sell out. We'd ideally love to have even more but hey, it's 2022!
If you'd like a Vespera from the stock arriving in a few months we'd suggest you either pre-order from the BINTEL website or call us on 02 9518 7255 to place a deposit to reserve one.
The Vespera under city and dark skies
The Vespera also performs extremely well under light polluted skies. For the astro fans, you'll be pleased to know it's a well specified telescope. The main optical system of the Vespera is a full APO (Apochromatic) refractor with a Quad Element lanthanum glass lens, Sony IMX462 sensor, a fully computerised Alt-Az mount with field de-rotation - plus lots more!
Discover Inner Space - Celestron Microscope kits for the School Holidays - $75
"What's living the water and soil in my backyard?"
Discover the fascinating plant and animal life inhabiting inner space all around us with the Celestron Microscope Kit for $75.
This Celestron kit includes a simple to use yet powerful microscope with magnification from 40x to 600x, glass slides, sample specimens, eyedropper and tweezers and more.
Use the lower powers for objects like minerals, coins or insects and the higher powers for plant and animal life. We're received great feedback from our customers who've purchased this Celestron kit for the young scientists in their family.
Aussie Space News
Black Hole Discovery: Scientists have discovered the brightest and fastest growing black hole for the past 9 billion years using the SkyMapper telescope at Siding Spring Observatory near Coonabarabran.
You might ask that if by definition light cannot escape a black hole, how can we possibly "see" it let alone be the brightest one for billions of years??
The "light" coming from black hole are from gasses orbiting and being pulled into it. We can't see the black hole itself. These gasses are heated up by the intense gravity of the black hole and this causes them to emit intense light. In some cases, like our own Milky Way, we can also observe stars orbiting "something" at such a high speed it can only be a super massive object like a black hole. The black hole itself remains unseen. We see the massive effects it has on its immediate surrounds
In this discovery, researchers were also able to go back to previous observations to see how the region has brightened over the decades as the black hole grows You can read news reports here or the scientific paper here.
Some news reports mentioned the new discovery could be imaged using an amateur telescope. Yes, it can be - it just needs to be a really, really big one.
Next time....BINTEL events!
We'll have details some of BINTEL's upcoming events in the coming months. Stay tuned!
Do you need accessories? BINTEL has Australia's widest range of telescope and imaging add-ons and accessories. We'll be showcasing some of our more popular items and maybe one or two of the obscure ones too.
* Sorry for the bad pun. We couldn't help ourselves.
