Someone, I think Celestron? put that technology into an eyepiece. Someone at the local astronomy club had one and I looked through it and through a regular eyepiece at two or three objects. The technology was very impressive at first. Astounding. I found that on one hand, it was amazingly easy to see lots of faint objects, especially galaxies as they were brightened nicely so that at say a star party anyone could look through the eyepiece and instantly see - "oh yeah - there's a galaxy there". But on the bad side it was very expensive and I couldn't see any more detail than without the eyepiece. In other words, the usual techniques (averted vision, staring at the damn thing for 10 seconds instead of the 1 second most kids do at star parties - I mean 10 seconds is a very long time to stare at a fuzzy) showed me just as much detail as the NV technology. Plus the NV technology was very noisy - like a TV screen with "snow". Also it harms your (personal) night vision a little bit (not as bad as looking at the moon though!). Also I think you feel more removed from the experience as the photons entering your eye are no longer travelling many light years - if you use NV technology then why use a telescope at all when you can just google M13 and get a much clearer picture? Another down side was that you lose all color (there's not much to lose but still even the little that you can see in say the dumbell or M51 is gone). For satellite observing this is certainly a drawback. I looked at M13 and a galaxy (dont' remember which one - this was about 10 years ago). I doubt the technology has changed much other than the price but I don't know. So overall my impression was - amazing technology - it's fine for inexperienced observers at star parties but maybe not even that. Maybe it's only good for vision impaired observers. Maybe it *is* good for swift moving things like meteors and satellites. Don't really know. - George Roberts http://gr5.org -----Original Message----- From: Roger Sent: Thursday, October 20, 2011 11:00 AM To: SeeSat-L Subject: night vision Has anybody had the opportunity to try out night vision goggles for satellite observing? _______________________________________________ Seesat-l mailing list http://mailman.satobs.org/mailman/listinfo/seesat-l
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