What size binoculars should i get for viewing planets ?
Well, with the exception of Neptune they are all visible to the naked eye from a dark sky location – Uranus is the challenging one. In towns and cities due to the effect of light pollution a pair of 7x50s will show Uranus just fine and I find you don’t need to go very far past the city limits at all (under a mile) to make out Neptune too. 7x50s are one of the common astronomy sizes – not too much power, comparatively lightweight and the ratio of power to aperture makes very efficient use of the available light. However, with a pair of 7x50s you won’t see much detail. You can see the phase of Venus at favorable times of year and the Galilean moons of Jupiter. Saturn appears noticeably non-round although you can’t actually see the rings per se, even when they are at a favorable orientation to us, which they are not at the moment. However, that is about all you can see. If you want to see surface details you need massive magnification, much beyond what is practical with a pair of binocula
