Re: night vision

From: George Roberts (gr@gr5.org)
Date: Thu Oct 20 2011 - 15:20:50 UTC

  • Next message: Paul Grace: "RE: night vision"

    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?
    
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