Quote:
Originally Posted by Darkplague
Looking at that last picture, its looks to be quite a pain to move those rings with all those bolts holding them but I am only guessing.
The only drawback that I can see is that if you have to refocus anything, this will also affect your pupil distances, therefore requiring you to move those top rings, possilbly putting it slightly out of collimation each time  |
Hi Mark...Oh yea of little faith !!!!!
The top ends need only rotate a few mm or so between different observers. The thin ply lining of the cages extend down into the support plate that the cages mount on. The cutouts are lined with ebony star formica, with a rub of dry silicon grease. With your hands on either edge of the slewing bar, you can reach up with fingertips to the two cage handles and adjust the IPD spacing..it is smooth as a babies ***.
Yes the focus can upset the inter-ocular spacing slightly , so here is the drill.
Focus each eye coarsly.
Set your IPD distance by rotating the cages.
Fine/final focus each eye , which usually only means a tweak of a few 1/10s of a mm , which doesn't noticeably effect the IPD spacing
Enjoy the view
This is a routine that becomes completely automatic .
If a slight tweak is needed to the merging of images there are two big knobs under the eyepieces to do that..one becomes accustomed to doing that if needed without even being aware.
The new observer quickly learns ( driven by completely selfish motives ! ) to tweak the view to perfection. We found at Lostock that 4 people is about a good number to get through objects in a reasonable time , taking into account the slightly longer time for people to make their own adjustments. One thing still needed is an auto- electric shock on the eyepieces that can be set to so many minutes. I hardly remeber anyone willingly giving up the view to the next observer without a prompt
