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Hi Chris.
I have been investigating possibility to build binocular telescope using two Celestron 102 wide field refractors for some time now.. But there is a twist in it. As I got very little vision in my left eye left, I want to build a binocular telescope for imagining. With two 100mm aperture scopes 250mm apart I think that I should get resolution similar to 18” scope. Of course, it would not have same light gathering ability as with 18”. But that would be to some extend compensated by using very sensitive GStar camera(s). Advantages of this scope would be that it can be used with average GE mount, reasonable portability and better resolution compared to single scope.
Problems. First I thought I could devise mirror and beam splitter (combiner) system and use one camera only. Unfortunately this is no go as the light path would be very long and I would not be able to achieve focus. So I settled on two cameras but I struck another problem. Synchronising two cameras without very expensive multiplexer is very difficult. Lately I tried security video multiplexer and thought it switches two cameras with 1second interval only it is sufficient for my application as GStar integrates images for 2.56 seconds. Collimating two cameras will be another problem, but some astronomical software packages can align and stack images on fly so even if the cameras are not align with pixel accuracy, the software may compensate for it.
I have done some testing with two cameras 100mm apart and two identical 8mm lenses. Done at night on terrestrial targets. I compared single image to combined image from two cameras and to two stacked images from one camera, and combined image from two cameras gave noticeably better resolution.
Whole thing may not work as I imagine at all, but when I get all the bits and pieces together I will have go and build it
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