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Halleluja!!!! (Let there be binoviewers...)
Dearly beloveds,
I've been a binoviewing skeptic for ages now. The 3D effect is just a trick, right? Magic eye gimmickry, it's not true stereopticism, is it? Well, no, of course it isn't! And astronomy is a science, right? So why dim the image for the sake of an optical illusion? Well...?
Then last night I tried a friend's WO binoviewer ($350, with included 20mm EPs - what a bargain!) on his LX90 8 inch SCT. First object: Orion's neb...
...Ten minutes later I eventually remember I'm standing at the observing site, using someone else's telescope, looking at something that ISN'T just hanging there in space a few feet away, wisps and filaments of cobweb nebulosity I should be able to just sweep away with my hand, the four stars of the trap magically suspended in the (much more contrasty than usual) black background. I just couldn't pull my eyes away...
I'll spare you the descriptions of Saturn, or various globulars. Suffice to say that we're talking Saul on the road to Damascus, Moses overlooking the promised land, Dante's vision of Beatrice...
No seriously, my first resolved vision of 47 Tuc probably got me thus far along the road of astronomy, but Orion's neb through binoviewers is an epiphany of another order of magnitude.
And no, it's not the 3D-ness that does it. It's the fact that you've got both eyes open. Your face relaxes, your body relaxes, you breathe more easily, you lose all tension, you forget that you're looking through a telescope, you spend longer looking at objects... It is just so much more natural. You see more, even if intellectually you KNOW you must be seeing less. Bringing two eyes into play, well, let's just face it, it's how humans are meant to see things.
You want to know the only bad thing? WO binoviewers won't work in my scopes. Looks like expensive Denks for me. But if you have an SCT and you baulk at spending big on binoviewers, you owe it to yourself to try out these inexpensive units from WO on your scope. It will probably be the best accessory you'll ever buy.
Go in peace, to love and serve the Nagler.
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