Quote:
Originally Posted by Stu Ward
Splitting the light will have a dimming effect i agree, but the ability to use both eyes to appreciate the photons must be beneficial surely.
Purely from an eyestrain point of view, being able to relax both eyes and take it in must improve the experience ?
Stu
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Hi Stu,
Yes there is a slight dimming effect,but not as great as you would think.At first glance at the theory it would seem the brightness factor would yield 50% to each eye so that a 12" aperture scope with binoviewer would be equivalent to an 8.5" scope in "monomode" as regards its ability to reveal faint objects, BUT, there is the factor of "light summation" to consider, whereby when both eyes send the received (simultaneous) signal to the brain a 1.4x increase in brightness is the result. Now this has the effect of taking your image to the level of a scope of 10" aperture. So overall though there is some loss in intensity of light in the binoviewed scope as comopared to same monoviewed scope its not too great.
Summation (like two cylinders firing instead of one) also (for most observers) has the effect of increasing both contrast and resolution by an apparent factor of up to 1.4x also. So your 12" scope (in binomode), can seemingly can give the contrast and resolution of a 16"-17" with one eyed views.
And yes eyestrain is much less.(One eyed squints can never please the optical receptors in the cerebal cortex like natural two eyed views).
Stephen.
