binoviewing bliss 8)

[janoskiss]

I have finally got to give my new Burgess binoviewers a decent workout after everyone has gone home and/or to bed.

I viewed Saturn mostly and Orion Neb as well. Seeing was excellent until just about 1 hour ago when the clouds started rolling in.

Binoviewing Saturn at high magnifications is just awesome. It looks huge and really looks like it is floating there in front of you. It is just :eyepop: and -jawdrop- (but I don't like that graphic, it takes up too much vertical space :P).

This is despite the binoviewer obviously degrading the quality of the image and introducing some aberrations. Nothing horrible, but contrast & sharpness are clearly down (transmission too, but the light is split in two), when compared with HD ortho or televue plossl mono views. I know that is not really a fair comparison, but also compared with barlowed Panoptic. (There is also a bit of false colour when eye placement is not quite right.)

I think for the money, the Burgess BV does a surprisingly good job. There is no misalignment in the image you see but the angle at which the light exits the left and right ocular are noticably different. Still I had no trouble merging the two images at 250x power! No vignetting with the 19mm Panoptics! With these EPs however, the BV is clearly the weak link in the optical train.

As I'm not likely to upgrade the BVs for at least a year or two, I'll probably be selling the newer of the two Panoptics and get a pair of good 20+mm plossls instead.

The light polluted views of Orion Neb M42 were immersing like cyclops viewing could never be. But I did have a hard time seeing E & F stars in the trapezium, both because of light loss and because of decreased sharpness. I managed to glimpse E but not F. Both were easy for cyclops with ortho or plossl. It was a similar story with Saturn's fainter moons. Still plenty of detail on Saturn, and quite a bit easier to pick up with two eyes than one.

The Burgess BV is not perfect, but I had a look at a Saxon BV at Bintel the other week and it was an absolute shocker by comparison. Vingetting to ~40 degrees with 25mm plossls! They cost quite a bit more than the Burgess too ($US200 shipped).

[Orion]

Thanks for the review Steve. I never had a chance to look through binoviewers before and am always wondering how would they work with the 18".

[davidpretorius]

thanks steve, are u briniging to the camp?

[janoskiss]

you bet!

[Starkler]

Cool bananas Steve :party:

I was observing down Mornington Peninsula last night myself and had my first view through a binoviewer. It was fashioned from a Zeiss microscope and we were viewing Saturn through Marks C14. There was a noticable contrast loss but the 3d effect on Saturns rings was pretty cool :)

For some reason I assumed the Burgess and saxon BV's were the same beast.

[danielsun]

Good stuff Steve!!! ;)
I wondered if or how they would effect viewing!
Look forward to checking it out at snake valley!!!

[janoskiss]

Geoff, the Saxon is bulkier and heavier despite having considerably less clear aperture.

One Panoptic is up for sale and the other one can resume its monoviewing duties. ;) I'll be getting either a pair of plossls or orthos for the binoviewer. :confuse3:

[wavelandscott]

I am anxious to hear your thoughts after you have a bit longer to play with your bino viewers...I've been thinking that that someday I'd like to get some too...

Keep us all posted...

[janoskiss]

Will do, waveland. :) Tonight I'll do some monoviewing through the binoviewer using my orthos and plossls to figure out what focal length pair would be best to get. I get quite a good range of magnifications with just one pair of EPs using the 1.9x OCA (optical corrector lens, used to allow the BV to reach focus in a Newt), 2" 2x barlow which gives about 2.7x with the extended optical path, and the combination of the two at about 5x; although the barlow + OCA + prisms + EP is a hell of a lot of glass. I was surprised to see anything at all through it, but it does work! Saturn looks like a huge balloon with great big hulahoops! :) (but clouds defeated me by the time I started playing with super high binoviewed mags)

[toetoe]

Sounds like you had fun Steve with the binoviewing :thumbsup: thanks for the good read. Just wondering what the eye relief was like while binoviewing.??

[janoskiss]

Eye relief with the 19mm Panoptics was great both with and without barlow in the binoviewer. Probably not so great for eyeglass wearers.

[janoskiss]

- 2 x 25mm Antares Elite (also known as Celestron Ultima) Plossls are on the way :)
- Looking for one more 15mm TV Plossl or 12mm HD ortho for high power binoviewing
- One new 19mm Panoptic is still up for sale.

I noticed in Silvie's S&S that Andrews has what appear to be the same binoviewers for $269 ea. That is less than what I paid for mine with postage from the US. Andrews is often frowned at for not being a dedicated astro dealer, but they are very good at what they do, i.e., import & sell locally with very minimal mark-up. And good on them!

[Starkler]

Steve, what the max effective focal length you can get with these binoviewers? Im curious as to how they fare on dso's. I wonder how an object like 47tuc might look with two eyes.

[janoskiss]

So am I, Geoff! I am yet to try them out under dark skies. 19mm Panoptic showed no vignetting, so 25mm plossls should be okay too. But that would probably be the widest you could go. And you still need a barlow or integrated magnifying corrector to reach focus in a Newt. So about 0.6 degree will be the widest true field in my Dob.