Do You Have The Visual Squigglies?

When observing bright objects, especially with a barlow and relatively short focal length EPs that also contain an internal barlow, my field of view resembles a glass slide with indistinct very thin worms, lint, spots, etc. This condition seems to be getting worse. My best solution so far has been to use shorter FLs rather than resort to a barlow, althought sometimes this isn't possible.

Any other squiggly sufferers out there? Any thoughts as to how to minimize the effect?

You are most likely talking about "floaters"..., and my solution is to blink my eyes to clean them up, before viewing through the eyepiece. (of course, YMMV) 8)

Hi Judson,
If you have, or can borrow, a binoviewer, you can see if that alleviates the problem. Using two eyes whe working with small exit pupils can be helpful, as the brain cancels out the floaters that are only seen in each individual eye.

Floaters have always been a problem for me. They are pretty annoying while looking at a bright sky with the naked eye as well as while observing planets and other bright things through the telescope.
I don't think there's anything to do with it - I just have to accept their presence. Fortunately I don't notice them during normal deep-sky observation.

Inge S

Any other squiggly sufferers out there? Any thoughts as to how to minimize the effect?

As others have discussed it seems as if you are describing "floaters", those bits of junk floating in the Vitreous Humour. They are quite tiny but when illuminated by a bright narrow pencil, they can quite bothersome. I find them most noticeable when the exit pupil is under 1mm viewing the bright planets.

Actual size of a 0.5mm exit pupil doesn't necessarily register but for perspective, the single pixil for this dot . is about .25mm so all the information in that image is being carried in a beam/pencil that is about twice the diameter of that period.

The floaters shouldn't depend on the way the exit pupil is achieved but larger exit pupils do reduce them. Thus for a given magnification, more aperture is the solution.

jon

Floaters are much more bothersome when observing with a scope/eyepiece combination that creates a small exit pupil, i.e a 1mm or less exit pupil. Many observers find that the optimal exit pupil for deep sky observing is 2mm. I would predict that your floaters will be much less bothersome if you back off on the magnification, use eyepieces that give you an exit pupil in the 2mm to 5mm range, and avoid looking at bright objects. The best way to survey your vitreous humor for floaters is to put an eyepiece in your scope that gives you a 0.5 mm exit pupil and train the scope on the full moon.