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ED80 Binoscope first light


philjay

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Very nice and very satisfying I suspect. Looking forward to you reporting on a clear night (soon I hope!)

Cheers

Ron

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Nice report. You look really proud of that project. ??

Edited by Tweedledee
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Good to hear its performing well Phil.

Well done to you for engineering it all.....it looks great.

 

Feel free to borrow an eyepiece pair from me at a meet, if you want to try anything.

I have 28s 24s 19s 15.8 13s and am also in the process of acquiring 14s and am thinking of 11s or 9s as well.

 

With your zooms.....are they parfocal ? I think thats the word...

ie when you zoom in from 24 down to a higher magnification, do you have to refocus either side or both...?

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11 hours ago, Tweedledee said:

Nice report. You look really proud of that project. ??

Yep, really pleased with it.

 

9 hours ago, Bino-viewer said:

Good to hear its performing well Phil.

Well done to you for engineering it all.....it looks great.

 

Feel free to borrow an eyepiece pair from me at a meet, if you want to try anything.

I have 28s 24s 19s 15.8 13s and am also in the process of acquiring 14s and am thinking of 11s or 9s as well.

 

With your zooms.....are they parfocal ? I think thats the word...

ie when you zoom in from 24 down to a higher magnification, do you have to refocus either side or both...?

Thanks for the offer I may take you up on the offer. Yes ish, they are parfocal for most of their range but need a little tweak on focus when at extremeties. Im going to get some 30/32 mm next then go for some 5mm s later.

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That is a fantastic bit of home engineering there Phil. Interesting to see how you thought your way round the many problems you encountered.

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Your set up looks very well engineered and thought out. ?

I enjoyed your report and the lead up to first light too! Cheers ? 

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Well would you beleive it, a pair of 32mm Celestron Plossls arrived yesterday, to be used in the bins for low power, 18x, and it was clear for a bit, enough to have a quick second light through the ED80 bins.

 

Early on I caught the thin crescent of tge moon low down before it set. Very nice at low mags with earthshine all the way round but higher mags were out due to atmospherics. I had about 15 minutes on this then it clouded over.

 

About 21.00 I set up again and revisited the objects I viewed on first light but this tine with the 32mn eyepieces.

Firstly the 32mm eyepieces with their good eyerelief were really comfortable to use, making observing very relaxed.  Collimation with them was easy as well due to the low mags.

 

First on the agenda was the Double Cluster, now it was good before with the Vixens at 25x but at 18x the colours of the stars came through really well. There were distinct reds and yellow components, lovely.

M31 was better with the Vixens but 110 and 32 were still prominent in the 32s.

M42 was washed out a bit by lp with the 32s but the Vixens at 8mm showed much more than the other night.

 

This time I got M81/82 dead easy with the 32s.

M45 fitted fully in the 32s fov and what a great sight  very 3d.

M36,37,38 and then M35 all looked good.

 

I am very pleased with this rig now, it performs about the same as a 5" I reckon pulling in similar faint detail but the experience of having an objective for each eye at higher than normal bino powers is really good.

 

So, conclusion, was it worth it? Hell yes! From the fun of learning, building to using it.

Im very pleased with it and looking forward to a dark site session

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That's a lovely bit of work there Phil, I know how much of a perfectionist you are, so if you are happy, they must be awesome.

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You must try my 28mm Edmunds with them Phil.

I will bring all my eyepieces to the next meet and you can try some new pairs....

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On 10/01/2019 at 18:48, Bino-viewer said:

You must try my 28mm Edmunds with them Phil.

I take it you've seen the floating image effect Rob. How does the effect look as a pair? What do you think to the view through the Edmunds. If I remember correctly you were displeased by the lens dust and lack of dust caps when you first got them.

 

In my opinion these eyepieces are nothing special apart from the unusual novelty of the floating effect. To me the effect seems like something you'd expect from some magic Harry Potter telescope housed in Hogwarts Astronomy Tower. ?

 

Your 24mm Panoptics should give slightly more magnification with a substantially larger real field and better clarity though less eye relief.

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I wholeheartedly agree Pete.

They are nothing special, at least to me.

 

And although the floating effect was mildly apparent, i don't think i had it all that much, like others report.

I also found eye placement a bit on the tricky side, and i was constantly readjusting before i got the hang of them.

 

I'm glad i tried them out though, they are quite sharp, but i think i will sell them on...

 

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  • 4 months later...

Just an addendum to the binos. Cutting 3" off the tubes means difficulty reaching focus with cameras if I want to use a single OTA for imaging sooooo

Heres my OTA insert on the bench, its now painted inside and out so it looks a bit nicer than this.

 

It was fun to turn this on the lathe, the first try ended up shooting across the garage due to not being able to grip the thin wall tube in the lathe chuck securely. Second attempt with leather pads on chuck jaws was more successful.

 

I now have a metamorphic binoscope ?

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Edited by philjay
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