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Jupiter (clearer) Nov 5th 2023 w/Mewlon 180c

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NIGHT VISION "EYEGLASSES"

Started by Thomas Dey, 11/05/2015 01:11AM
Posted 11/05/2015 01:11AM | Edited 11/05/2015 01:17AM Opening Post
Well, THIS is interesting! All my life (?) I've been protecting my Dark Adaptation. You DS observers know the feeling - get to a nice Dark Site, equipment set up ready to go after the little fuzzies. You know all your gear by heart and can pretty much find things in the cases and the sky without turning on a light. And even at the eyepiece "averted vison" has become automatic. I recently got these (yep - TWO) Night Vision 1x monoculars. They are the GOOD ones and the 1X is Exactly 1x. Much to my surprise, I find that at 1X I can simply hold one to each eye and the images are naturally merged - TRUE binocular 1X Night Vision "Eyeglasses" is the feeling. Hard to explain, but It doesn't feel like looking thru an instrument at all - it feels more like looking thru a Window - A supercharged bionoc eyes window! My "limiting magintude" has jumped from around 6 to more like 8! It's like I'm on top of Mt. Everest! Just scanning around and M31 is of course brilliant and M33 has gone from fleetingly tough to a piece of cake. The Pleiades and Hyades look like true clusters now. It's Amazing, and I have to remind myself that Dark Adaptation doesn't even matter. Meteors and satellites all over the place. So that's great - But the truly amazing part was putting H-alpha 12nm "CCD" filters over the small (one-inch!) objectives. Look up and the sky is FULL of H-alpha stuff! The N American, Pelican and Gamma "Butterfly" are blazingly Obvions! California, Rosette, M42, The "boot", Orion Loop and even the region that contains the Horsehead all Obvious! (Horsehead itself a bit too small to see at 1X). And lots of other H-alpha blobs that I will have to visit the atlas to ID what they are. It's a Whole New World (Universe) looking through this window. Technical: I tried left only, right only the Both together. Surprising (although hoped for) is that indeed two eyes (With Two Completely Separate Optical Trains) is WAY better than one eye only. I still don't understand it - but Both together look much Brighter than one. They of course are Not - but it looks ... twice as bright! And the view is also much more "real" and better resolved and contrasty. I think part of it is because the "scintillation" L/R is of course uncorrelated, so the visual cortex is FAR more able to filter out anything that is not present in both eyes. If a little sparkle is only L or only R, the brain ignores it as Not being in the sky. Anyway, the extravagence has paid off in blow socks off experience looking up. Not done yet though - I have JMI RB16s and 1.25 adapters to use these as "eyepieces" I think I'm cheating? Tom

29-inch Dob in a dome
36-inch upgrade soon
LUNT 80/80 solar scope
FLI 6803 cam
APM 100mm APO Binos
JMI RB-16 Night Vision Binos
Zeiss 20x60 IS binos
Posted 11/05/2015 09:33PM #1
Wonderful post! What equipment did you use and how much did it cost?

Mike