Here's the situation: You only have, say, $250 to spend on binoculars. You want to sky-watch, but you also want to go birding, boating, hiking and you want to see the players at the game up close, even though your seats are in nosebleed country. You need an astronomy-capable medium size binocular. We think we've found a solution for you: Celestron's SkyMaster 8x56, our Editors' Choice for the best medium-size binoculars for astronomy.

Weighing only 38 ounces, you can carry these for hours during your busy outdoor day. At night, lie back in an outdoor recliner and you can hand-hold them for a good long while. The wide rubber bumpers on the oculars' lens-guards are comfortable enough to rest on your cheekbones and brow (eye "orbits"). [Related: See our Buyer's Guide: How to Choose Binoculars for Stargazing]

BUY a pair of Celestron SkyMaster 8x56 binoculars >> Below: See our Hands On Video Tour of Celestron's SkyMaster 8x56 (Click to Play):

But for the most soulful starlight absorption you'll want to spend $16 for a tripod adapter and perhaps up to $100 for a tripod with multi-axis head. Of course, you can use your existing camera tripod. Just make sure it doesnt wiggle in the wind; dancing stars will give you a headache.

These SkyMasters are sealed and wrapped in rubber. They won't slip in your hands, or slide around a moderately pitching boat deck. They were "nitrogen purged" at the factory in China, which means they've been injected with nitrogen gas, "chasing out" any water vapor before sealing the optical cans.

Best Astronomy Binoculars 2014 (Editors' Choice)

Taken together, these factors effectively "waterproof" the binoculars' optics (though the adjustable ocular ring and the center focus wheel could rust or corrode in time). They also make the optics resistant to condensation. You can still make them fog up by, say, taking them from your dry, air-conditioned den straight out into the hot muggy late-summer night. [And when you go back in again, after an hour or so in moist air, it'd be a good idea to leave the lens caps off until your 8x56s are completely dry.] Or save you stargazing for the night after the cold front passes. As every skywatcher soon learns, the crispest stars are seen on the coldest night.

Eyeglass wearers will be thankful for the relatively long 18mm of eye relief. [Eye relief is the distance from the eyepiece lens' surface to the last spot a full-width image can be seen.] You can probably get your glasses cozily up against the soft twist-up style lens guards to seal out stray light, which can distract you from reading those messages the stars are sending you.

The generous 7-millimeter exit pupil is wide enough for your mind to fall into. ["Exit pupil" is the area of virtual image at the binoculars' "focus point," the circle you look into.] We've notice relatively larger exit pupil diameters on small and medium Celestrons. The perfectly round disc of that exit pupil tells you something encouraging about the quality of the BaK-4 glass Porro prismswithin. A lesser binocular might show you some angular fall-off, especially towards the top of the exit pupil.

The 8x56s will focus no closer than about 25 feet (7.6 meters). That's enough for most terrestrial applications. If youre closer to an animal than that, you probably don't need it magnified unless it's tiny. Similarly, any sports activity taking place that close to you is de-facto a naked-eye proposition. The stars, of course are very, very far away. At 5.8 degrees, the Celestron's field of view is decidedly "medium" compared to, for example, the Vixen Ascot 10x50's 8.5 degrees. But its wide enough to get a satisfying sense of perspective on objects in the sky.

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Celestron SkyMaster 8x56 Binoculars Review: 2014 Edition