Do you keep one eye closed?

[Rod66]

As the time approaches when I may take delivery of my telescope, a thought comes to mind. Because its only a single eye that does the viewing, do most people close one eye, keep both eyes open or wear some sort of pirate patch to make the seeing easier? I'm interested to know what people do.

thanks

Rod

[Quark]

Hi Rod,

Keep both of your eyes open, cover the eye that is not looking through the eyepiece with your hand or possibly an eye patch from your local Chemist.

This relaxes the muscles in both eyes and will result in you seeing more detail, it also means that you wont end of with a headache from the eyestrain caused by spending hours squinting through one eye.

Regards
Trevor

[erick]

Ditto. I've tried the soft type and the hard plastic type. Hard plastic type is best for me - easy to keep eye open and blink behind it. I have just softened the edge where it touches my face (with a bit of spare flocking paper! :D )

[Rodstar]

I keep my non-observing eye closed.

Sometimes I switch between eyes for a change of perspective.

I found early on into the hobby that I felt some tiredness from closing the non-observing eye, but over time this tiredness has ceased to be a real issue - perhaps a form of "match fitness"??

The reality for most observers is that they spend only a small fraction of their time actually looking through the eyepiece. In my case, a lot of the thrill is in consulting maps, and hunting things down, comparing the view through eyepeices of various focal lengths etc, so there is a lot of down time.

I do have a solid eyepatch. I tried it for a while, but I found it too annoying, bearing in mind that I am already taking my glasses on and off between looking in the EP and meandering around about.

Interesting thread...look forward to seeing what other people do.