This is a case of a sheep in wolf's clothing. The 15-45x70mm zoom binocular sold by Sportsman's Guide is an attractive unit, many of the components are identical to those on the 15 x 70mm Bear brand. The instruction sheet is the same one packed with the 10x50 binocular, in German and English. The binocular has "JC Optics" silkscreened onto the prism housing; the warranty card was issued by Grampus Enterprises. The binocular came with a soft case, dust covers for objectives and eyepieces, an "L" bracket made of molded plastic (identical to the one that came with the Bears), and a folding table-top tripod with ball-turret for the "L" bracket to attach to. Neck-strap and cleaning cloth round out the package. Rubber armor in green and black, and fold-down eyeguards make for an attractive binocular that can be used by eyeglass wearers. The binoculars seemed to work well on terrestrial objects during the daytime. The first thing noticed is the small apparent field at 15x- I'd say its only about 3 or 4-degrees at 1000 yards. The zoom lever is located ahead of the right eyepiece, with an indicator just ahead of the left eyepiece. 15x, 30x, and 45x are indicated, with a dot between those powers. Zoom control is continuous. As the magnification was increased, the apparent field opened right up until at 45x, the field was very wide. This is typical of all zoom eyepieces and was not unexpected. The narrow field at 15x was in sharp contrast to the very wide field of the fixed-power Bears. Night use revealed the shortcomings. On Jupiter, there were obvious ghosts, no doubt from the extra lenses needed for the zoom system. I also noticed spurious color flares around Jupiter and bright stars. While collimation seemed good at 15x, the optical trains pulled apart as magnification increased, until at 45x I had a hard time achieving image fusion. My eyes were pulled so far that I was getting a headache from the strain. There was plenty of eye-relief, but the image was soft at all powers, and combined with the ghosts and flares made the experience frustrating, and no amount of eye-relief can compensate for a poor image. Even at 45x, where I should have seen at least some banding on Jupiter, only a smeared-out blob was visible. These binoculars were obviously intended for surveillance, explaining the "car-top" tripod. I cannot recommend these for astronomy. Anyone using them on the night sky will only come away frustrated. Perhaps the lesson here is that optical systems built to do "everything" will do nothing well. I am returning this pair to Sportsman's Guide for a refund. Priced at $99.97, they are no bargain. I'll stick with my Bears. Chuck's rating: 0 stars (of 5 possible) unusable for astronomy. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Health - your guide to health and wellness http://health.yahoo.com