Binocular viewer on Newtonian

OneOfOne (Trevor) · #1 12-10-2005, 12:51 PM

Hi guys,

I was looking in the latest issue of Sky & Telescope and found an ad from Denkmeier stating that their "Big Easey" viewer will allow all scopes to come to focus. After reading their web page, it has an adaptor (OCS) that seems to increase the light path to allow even a Newtonian to come to focus. Has anyone purchased one or investigated putting one on a Newtonian?

The other reason I am interested is because the OCS may also allow a diagonal to be used as well. A friend of mine is in a wheel chair and I was hoping a diagonal would bring the light away from the tube and down for him to look through. The OCS may give enough focus to allow this to work. Does this seem like a possibility?

Clear skies....one day!
Looking forward to the camp, see you there!

Roger Davis · #2 12-10-2005, 02:36 PM

This is, I think, a kind of Barlow lens at 1.4X. This would necessitate the "in-focus" as they indicate, which is the same required by a Barlow lens. AT US$400 the lower end of the range doesn't look too bad. But I would baulk at the one I really like at approx US$2,300!

videoguy · #3 12-10-2005, 02:51 PM

I have a bino viewer and really like it when I'm in the pure visual. Indeed it had the "not enough inward focus" problem and requires a 1.6X lens threaded in to the end to correct for this on both refractors and Newtonians. A Cassegrain doesn't need it. They take a bit of getting used to especially when observing the planets. One needs to correctly focus for both eyes (naturally) and get the eye spacing just right so that you don't see double vision. Very good for the Moon and deep sky especially with long eyerelief eyepieces.