Do you recall my column, Giant Space Binoculars You Can 3D Print, from 2020? I remember drooling with desire when I saw those. As the years passed, however, my memories faded, and I became increasingly content with my existing situation (i.e., borrowing my wife’s 4-inch refractor telescope when the occasion demanded), until…

If you’ve ever peered through a modest backyard telescope and thought, “This is pretty cool,” then prepare to have your socks, sandals, and possibly your eyebrows blown off. I’ve just started drooling once again over the Bloom binoculars from the bodacious boffins at Analog Sky, and let me tell you, these aren’t your granddad’s bird-watching glasses.

We’re talking 333X magnification through a pair of giant twin refractors so beautiful they will make even hardened astronomers go wobbly at the knees. To put this in perspective (no pun intended), the full Moon—which looks like a bright coin to the naked eye—would fill your field of view like a world you could almost step onto. You’d be able to see craters only a mile or two across, mountain peaks casting razor-sharp shadows, and delicate rilles (valleys carved by ancient lava flows) that snake across the lunar plains like frozen rivers of silver.

Suppose you were to point these bodacious beauties toward Saturn. At 333X, the planet’s famous rings wouldn’t just be visible, they’d be architectural. You’d be able to make out the Cassini Division (the dark gap between the A and B rings), the planet’s shadow sliding across them, and the rings’ shadow draped across Saturn’s cloud tops (if that’s not cosmic poetry, I don’t know what is).

And then there’s Jupiter, where the cloud bands, the Great Red Spot, and the four Galilean moons parade around like a miniature solar system. On good nights, you’d even be able to spot the moons’ shadows drifting across the planet’s face—a solar eclipse in miniature, happening hundreds of millions of miles away.

So yes, starting at $3,199, the Bloom binoculars are a little bit over the top. But for any of us who have ever dreamed of really seeing the heavens—not just looking at them—then these little scamps would be our ticket to the stars (note to self; must purchase another lottery ticket on the way home).