Rather than start a new thread I thought I would tack onto this thread by Stefan....
I recently bought a pair of LOA 21mm "3D" eyepieces (Thanks Andrew
) to see what the fuss was about.....
The planned First Light on Saturday at Charlotte Pass, KNP, was beset with a sky coated in the red soil of the interior but thankfully that cleared and gave a pristine sky over Canberra and the Brindabella Mountains last night
I set up the Baby BiTSA on its AZ-EQ6GT in the twilight at Mount Stromlo
and watched the moon with normal eyepieces (Tak LE30, LE7.5 and Pentax XF8.5) while waiting the sky to darken....
Once it got a little darker I swapped in the LOA21s.......
I wasn't expecting much given the Moon was doing its best to light up the sky so I dialled in M42 which I had heard was a good target for these '3D' gadgets.
The eyepiece is designed so that ,by rotating it 180º in the focuser, the centre area can be made either recede into the background or to sit ahead of the field stars around it. The are also 4 other segments that placed the surroundings at differing depths...
The effect is actually sensational and the fact that this is an artificial 3D representation of the target area takes nothing away from the fact that it is an enjoyable way to see familiar object in a different way.
The other targets where the effect was very good were 47Tuc, Eta Carina, Jewel Box, M45 but the biggest surprise to me was when I centred 46P-Wirtanen in the array and brought the comet to the 'foreground'.
In this position I was able to see the comet much more clearly and as a slightly elongated object. While M42 and 3372 looked better with the centre receding, the comet looked as if plucked out of the background stars to be examined more closely.
I then went back to 47 Tuc which had improved as the sky darkened and used the same 'Near' setting which had the globular floating in the space between me and the background ...... this made it easier to discern star colours around the core...
During the evening several CAS members turned up as well as the MSO Security officer so we all took turns at the eyepieces until well after midnight........ (after which I retired to the comfort of my motorhome for a hot cuppa and a sleep before heading off the mountain in the morning)
Cheers,
Matt
P.S. For those who haven't been at MSO at night, there are hundreds of kangaroos, rabbits and wallabies and though I have spent most of my life camping in the bush, it still sends a chill down one's spine when a large male kangaroo creeps up behind you and then announces his presence scraping the ground and grunting only a few feet behind you !!!! My pulse went from its resting 58 to double that in a few milliseconds...