What's up with Binoculars?

What's up with binoculars and why do they outsell monoculars? Convinced of the inferiority of binoculars' (due to seemed unnecessary bulk, weight, and material costs), I was finding myself absolutely sure that the world was making a horrible mistake by preferring them over monoculars. Turns out I'm absolutely wrong.

I was so smug when I noted that your depth perception would be ruined by the reduced parallax (ooo my new optics lingo) resulting from magnification. Turns out your depth perception is not affected until magnified greater than 10x [2].

General optical acuity is improved by using both eyes also. But "the binocular detection threshold of dim light is 1.4 times better than for monocular viewing" [1]. So using both eyes is important with telescopes more than anything.


Anyway ... wary of possessing too much clarity, depth, and vision so early in my quest, I bought a monocular.