GavStar

A french company has just launched a night vision monocular specifically for astronomer users. Link attached. https://oculaire-vision-nocturne.jimdo.com/english/shop/ In addition to the usual (expensive) European nv tubes, they also offer second hand military surplus gen 3 night vision tubes from 2000 euros. Still not cheap but maybe this means night vision astronomy is more accessible for Europeans now.

I don’t understand the ‘designed to fit in carry on luggage’ comment. The link indicates that with the dew shield retracted and accessories removed the length of the DZ is 595mm, which is significantly longer than the maximum 560mm allowed as hand luggage on virtually all aircraft now. Plus you would want the scope to be kept in a suitably padded bag so I find for travel scopes I need a length of 500mm or so maximum.

Robert, Here’s some comparison Pac-Man shots (85mm Tak, 130mm AP and the 16 inch dob) A comparison with the Veil (Tak 85, tv85, c11, 16 inch dob) A crescent comparison (Tak 85, c11, 16 dob)

Robert, I used my 95mm Baader refractor. Since I was also taking my 60mm lunt in hand luggage that was enough for me to South America! 😀

It’s this one: https://actinblack.com/pvs-14/

My favourite scope to use with my night vision monoculars is I think my C11 which has given me some fantastic views with a 0.75x reducer and 55mm plossl (effective system speed f3.3). However, I had a dose of aperture fever last year and ordered a 16 inch goto dob manufactured by sky vision in France. It turned up late last year and as it was my first dob I was a bit shocked by the size and bulk of it. I had a couple of goes with it but struggled with the coma corrector spacing (I had the Es one) and was a bit disappointed with the nv views it gave since the edge stars were not great. The scope got mothballed for a few months. Then events happened which enabled me to take it to my dark sky site for further testing. I purchased a Televue paracorr which increases the f ratio of the scope a little but enabled me to be more confident about getting the coma corrector working properly. I set the scope up carefully following the paracorr instructions and with an ethos in non nv mode the views looked good across the field of view. However once I moved to the nv monoculars and 41mm panoptic the star shapes at the edge weren’t great. I was disappointed. I checked the paracorr instructions and I’d done everything right. I checked the collimation again and it was a bit out. After adjusting and redoing collimation twice I eventually got decent stars with the panoptic. Are nv monoculars more sensitive to non-accurate collimation than normal glass eyepieces?? I think using the night vision monoculars in afocal mode with an eyepiece does impact the edge of the fov to some extent. Anyway after a few hitches with the goto setup I eventually got everything working well. By this time it was getting very late so I only managed a few objects in Cygnus. But they looked rather nice - a step up in resolution to my c11 phone images I think and the visual views are also noticeably better. Here are phone images of the Pac-man, eastern veil and crescent nebula. I’m now looking forward to using this scope again despite it taking materially longer for me to setup compared to the c11.

In July I went on a 8 day trip to Argentina and Chile to see the recent total solar eclipse with my dad. The eclipse was awesome with fantastic blue skies from our viewing location in Bella Vista in Argentina. Here’s a phone shot I did of the eclipse. However, this post is not about the eclipse. I’ve never observed the Southern Hemisphere night skies with a scope before, so I couldn’t resist also taking my 95mm Baader refractor with me. Coming from Europe my pvs-14 is also itar-free so I also took along my Photonis 4g intens with me. Unfortunately due to the trip scheduling, there was only one night I was able to observe which was the night of the actual eclipse itself - this turned into quite a long day! The skies were very dark at this pretty remote location in Argentina but unfortunately the hotel lights were quite bright bringing the sqm reading down to around 21. Initially I just scanned with Milky Way at 1x with the nv, both unfiltered and with my 5nm ha chroma filter. The Milky Way was just stunning unfiltered, with the heart of our galaxy directly overhead. The detail and contrast of the dark lanes with the white fluffy bits was something to behold. By a large margin the best views I’ve ever had of the MW. I also scanned with the ha filter attached and a little surprisingly for me, there wasn’t massive amounts of emission nebulae visible in the south. But what there was did rather stand out (in particular eta carinae, of which more later) as per this phone image I took at 1x mag. I then set up the 95mm Baader. I had limited time since it was getting late and I had to catch an early coach in the morning. Therefore I decided to focus on a couple of showcase objects. First up, using the 41mm panoptic, 0.75x reducer and 5nm chroma ha filter was eta carinae itself. The fov was around 3.5 degrees with a magnification of 10x. The object just fit into the fov but wow the view was just filled with nebulosity - one of my very best night vision views I’ve had, surpassing the vast majority of northern sky emission nebulae. Just above this was the so called ‘running chicken nebula’. Not as stunning or bright but still a lot of fun to observe. I searched around for the LMC or SMC but unfortunately they were too low in the sky and obscured by some trees. With it getting quite late, I went for my final showcase object, the Omega Centauri globular cluster. I decided to increase the magnification to 30x by using an 18.2mm delite (fov just over 1 degree). Even with the relatively low magnification, this globular looked incredible - like nothing else I have seen before. The eyepiece views were more impressive than the phone image since the core didn’t blow out. Coincidentally when I got home I stumbled upon an image I took of m13 using the exact same setup of 95mm Baader, 18.2 delite and nv monoculars. The side by side comparison (see final image of m13) did make me gasp - I didn’t realise that omega centauri was so much bigger than m13. Just shows what us northerners are missing... A great trip to see a fantastic total solar eclipse, topped off by a lovely few hours under the southern skies with nv. I don’t think I’m going to get another opportunity anytime soon but I certainly won’t forget the views I got.

The total fov of the image is about 1 degree which should help assess the size of the various structures seen. Nv isn’t useful for hb or oiii emissions but my understanding is that generally the ha emission is much stronger than hb. Here’s an approx 5 degree view of the area around the bubble which shows some of the larger ha structures round it (including the lobster claw)

Gerry, Does this nv pic of the bubble help? There does seem to be an arc close by... Gavin

Pleasingly my new Fsq-85 has perfect collimation. I admit it was a slight concern (due to the 4 lens petzval design) before purchase but the star test was excellent. I had a bad collimation issue with a CFF telescope and it’s certainly a disappointing issue to have with an expensive scope.

My family enjoy summer holidays in the Canary Islands, great food, sun and lots of swimming. I add to that fantastic skies for astronomy and on our most recent trip, I was able to stay two nights in the Teide national park hotel, Parador de las Cañadas del Teide. This hotel is situated at about 2100m high and is the only place to stay in the national park itself so has very good dark skies. Attached is a daytime photo I took of my observing location.Given luggage constraints, I decided to take my recently acquired Tak FSQ-85 together with my night vision monoculars and various eyepieces for afocal use. Also attached is a photo of my setup in use at Teide. Apart from a quick test session at home, this was my first chance to try the Tak and I was eager to see what the fast side flat field views would be like with Night Vision under a dark sky. I wasn’t disappointed:) The Tak worked brilliantly with my skywatcher az gti and once I’d done the initial alignment I didn’t have to update it for the rest of the session. Night 1 Lovely clear skies on arrival at the hotel at about 8pm. I had a beer in the hotel for refreshment after a day in the sun and then headed out once it got dark at about 10pm. I took a number of sqm measurements through the night and the best was 21.58. First up I decided to just have a scan of the Milky Way with my night vision monoculars. The centre of the Milky Way was pretty high (certainly compared to the UK!) and the dark rifts were as clear as I’ve seen. I took a short phone video of the views which gives some indication of what was visible. Then the Tak was setup. I did a star test and this showed the optics were top notch. First up with the Tak was some planetary viewing (not with nv!) of Jupiter and Saturn which are much better placed in Tenerife than the UK. I was using my 3.5mm Pentax Xw giving around 130x. The GRS really popped out and around 6 cloud bands were visible. The seeing was very good and I got very sharp views. Saturn showed the Cassini division very clearly plus some cloud handing on the actual planet. A great start! Next up I used my night vision in afocal mode to get my first proper view of m22. I used an 18mm delite to get 25x mag and got nice mass of stars resolved in the centre. I was keen to see what the Tak could deliver for widefield vision views so changed to my 55mm plossl in afocal mode (with ha filter for viewing emission nebulae) which would give an effective speed of f2.5 and a field of view of nearly 5 degrees. With Cygnus high overhead, I couldn’t resist looking at some old favourites. The fast effective speed and dark sky combination really showed since emission nebulae just was everywhere. With the fast speed of the Tak the plossl did show some astigmatism at the edge of the fov but the very minimal field curvature controlled this well and the widefield views were excellent. 5 degrees is larger than I normally observe with and I found that I enjoyed the additional framing of the larger objects. For example, here is the Veil, North America/Pelican and Crescent nebulae. The background emission nebulae is very apparent in the Crescent image and gives an indication of how the skies looked as I was just panning up from Sagittarius to Cygnus. Next up was a look at the nebulae in Sagittarius (which in the UK are very low, but significantly higher in Tenerife). The large fov and low mag meant that the detail in these smaller objects was limited but again the background nebulosity again came out well. Here you see the Swan and Eagle and the Trifid and Lagoon. Given the dark skies, I then moved on to some less well known objects. Here is CED 214. I’d noticed recently a large object near the bubble which I wanted to explore more. From research afterwards I discovered this was sharpless 157 or the lobster claw. And I often find the widefield views of the nebula containing the elephant’s trunk a bit indistinct and disappointing but not tonight - the dark nebula was clearly visible. The pac-man, cocoon and wizard were quite small but still fun to view It was approaching 2am now and a couple of old friends had now arrived reasonably high in the sky. The heart and the soul nebulae, which were again framed really nicely by the Tak/55mm plossl combo. It had now been a long day, so I decided to pack up and get some sleep ready for night 2... Night 2 I spent the day at the beach with my family and then did the drive up the mountain at about 8pm. When I left the coast it was sunny but it gradually got cloudier and cloudier as I went higher. By the time I arrived at the Teide hotel it was completely clouded over . Checking the internet satellite pics things looked much more hopeful with skies looking clear by around 10.30pm. I went out around 10pm and by the time I had setup the skies were once again dark (sqm 21.48 max) and clear with the Milky Way sweeping overhead as before. This time I focused mostly on real-time nv visual observing, moving from Sagittarius upwards towards Cygnus following the swathes of nebulosity visible through my Tak. A breathtaking view of the night sky. After a couple of hours of just scanning the general emission nebulae in the Milky Way, I took a few phone images of some lesser known dsos. A couple of examples were sharpless 119 and sharpless 86. To end day 2 I finished with another couple of favourites. First up the 5 degree fov of the setuo gave a great framing of the gamma cygni nebula (which seems a bit underrated compared to the North American etc) but I really like it. And the the California nebula, again the large fov captured this large nebulae well. The next morning as I was driving down the mountain back to the coast (listening to Suede, Oasis, Radiohead and Duran Duran(!)), I reflected on the 2 nights observing. My new scope worked faultlessly with the az gti and the skies were the best I’ve observed under. I realised that I get so much more enjoyment observing with nv under dark 21+ skies rather than the 18.4ish I get at home in SW London. Even though the nebulae are visible in London, the sky background is much brighter unlike the dark skies where the sky background is inky black and the nebulae just seem to pop out of the sky.

For visual the Baader travel companion For imaging The Takahashi fsq-85 Both absolutely wonderful (and the AP Stowaway and Tv85 ain’t bad either 😉) A couple of past threads that may be of interest. I also have the Epsilon 130d but prefer the ease of use and views through my travel refractors.

I have both a c11 and a 16 inch goto dob. I note that several people have said go for the 16 inch dob, particularly for visual, due to the extra aperture, and I understand why. But I think it’s also worth restating the obvious ‘the best telescope is the one that you actually use’ comment. I think this should be emphasised since a 16 inch dob is not easy to transport around imo. Ideally you would store it fully setup and then just wheel it out on wheelbarrow wheels. I use my c11 on a lovely panther TTS alt az mount and I find it very easy to transport and setup. In particular, the c11 ota is not that big or heavy and the mount packs away into conveniently sized packages. However, my 16 inch dob is a bit of a beast even though it’s a ‘compact’ version. With the mirror in place, the mirror box weighs around 30kg which is quite heavy to move around carefully - I now tend to move the mirror box without the mirror in it. And the footprint of the dob is pretty large - it’s not straightforward to pack into my Discovery Sport (and the back seats have to go down). For my preferences, the c11 is much easier to setup and observe with (I also like the seated observing position of the c11 compared with standing for the 16 inch dob). As a result, my c11 gets used many more times than my 16 inch dob and for this reason I prefer the c11. I also enjoy taking phone images with the c11 as per the attached. 😀(Not proper imaging but I enjoy it)

It was a wonderful experience and a great one to share with my dad. Lovely clear skies in Bella Vista, Argentina. The moon was inky black at totality - blacker than most according to the experienced eclipse observers. Although low in the sky it certainly seemed higher and was lovely set against the Andes. Quick phone pic attached as I was concentrating on just enjoying the views.

I had always assumed that the Travel Companion objective was made by Canon as well John. I know that Gerry ( @jetstream ) asked Baader directly the source of the fluorite lenses and they declined to supply this. However, I decided to do a did more research this morning to see whether I could find out more. Firstly I note that Roland Christen of Astro-Physics has confirmed that there are a number of suppliers of fluorite lens as per the following quote from the AP yahoo groups: "A lens cannot use two of the same type glasses. I am quite familiar with the design of the Aries doublet. It is nothing especially difficult as far as design. It is very similar to the design of the original Takahashi doublet fluorites that were offered some 20 years ago in 4" and 5" sizes. Front element KzFSN2, rear element CaF2. Straight forward, all-spherical airspaced. The variable here will be how well the optical company fabricates the fluorite element. It can be notoriously difficult to make this without fine sleeks and scratches. CaF2 is ultra-soft and hard to polish to a high degree. Oiling it between tow outer glasses eliminates all this - the sleeks and even scratches disappear, and the lens becomes ultra-clear and of high contrast. Fluorite can be purchased today from a number of sources, and I have actually made a number of fluorite triplets in the past (the 90mm F5 Stowaway being the most famous example). I have made other sizes in experimental numbers, up to 6.8 inches. Fluorite is used today in specialty optics, in stepper lenses and in UV transmitting windows in scientific instrumentation. It is mostly very expensive, and can be variable in quality if you happen to be unlucky in your choice of supplier and batch. It is a heavy risk for a small company like AP to make such a huge financial commitment without knowing how the material will work out." Then I found this CN post from the late Per Frejvall (who was one of the first purchasers of the Baader Travel Companion back in 2014), who states that it has the same glass and basic design as the Zeiss APQ 100 and that the optics are made in Germany. https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/477858-anyone-have-the-baader-apo-95560-caf2/?hl=%2Bbaader+%2B95mm#entry6240163 The Zeiss APQ fluorite lenses were made in house, Zeiss had a specialist subsidiary, schott lithotec who made the fluorite blanks. https://www.laserfocusworld.com/optics/article/16558307/schott-lithotec-delivers-calcium-fluoride-lens-blanks I found the glass list for Schott in an excel spreadsheet which shows caf2 (fluorite) being removed as an offering in 2010, and I thought that was it. But then I found out that In April 2010, the Hellma Group took over Schott Lithotec´s calcium fluoride production. It continues its business, now called Hellma Materials, at its site in Jena. Hellma states in its website that it does supply fluorite for astronomical instruments. https://www.hellma.com/en/crystalline-materials/optical-materials/caf2/ So maybe, just maybe, the fluorite objective for the Baader Travel Companion is made in Germany with the fluorite supplied by Hellma. I guess we won’t ever find out!

Ok, as a European owner of one of the new AP Stowaways I’ll give you some thoughts on it. @nicoscy also owns one so he may also have some useful info for you. Please note I am visual only, no imaging done. First of all regarding portability here’s a shot of mine against my televue tv85 and baader travel companion 95mm. Dimensions wise it’s just a tiny bit longer than the tv85 (not obvious from photo) but it’s about the same weight as the tv85 and in hand seems just as portable. I also have a Tak fc100df and that is a significantly bigger scope and definitely feels in a different category size wise. In summary the Stowaway is a very portable and light scope. My az gti mount works beautifully with it. It’s also superbly made. I have several top class refractors (another Ap, a 160mm tec, the Tak and tv85) and I would say this is the best made of them all (even beating my tec!). I love the feather touch focuser that comes with it and not heavy at all for my visual use. The screws don’t worry me at all - I just ignore them 😀. I notice you are from Italy - I got mine from Skypoint in Italy and Mauro gave me fantastic service. I had a small issue with the felt on the tube rings and Mauro sorted it out AP very quickly and efficiently. So any downsides? Well I think it’s 99% certain that the lenses are made and coated in China unlike virtually any other AP scope. There is a reasonable amount of evidence for this (obvious green coating on the lenses, font and wording on lens ring being the same as many Chinese scopes and different to previous AP scopes etc) Roland was asked the question directly on the AP yahoo group and was evasive and didn’t answer the question. Since this scope is fully air spaced the likely situation is that Roland manually tuned the lenses by adjusting the positions to give the excellent characteristics he was after. He did give lots of detail on the yahoo group about how this was done - seems quite a complex process! But if the results are great, does it matter where the lenses are made and coated?? Also I have done a side by side test against both my tv85 and baader as described towards the end of this thread. https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/633270-baader-travel-companion-or-ap-stowaway/ In summary the AP beat the tv85 noticeably (as it should given the extra aperture) but came second in contrast to the Baader at high mag on things like the Plato craterlets. However, as you can imagine the differences are marginal and I’m very impressed with the optics of my Stowaway. I intend to test my Stowaway and Baader against the Tak fc100df in the next few months. I’m expecting all three scopes to have very similar (excellent) views. If I was given a choice between the Stowaway and the Tak, I would choose the Stowaway since it’s noticeably more portable and can be taken on an aeroplane more easily. (But I’d take my Baader above both!!) So my advice is get the Stowaway or give Baader a call/email direct to see if they can supply you with a travel companion 95mm.

I thought so too Robert, hence I posted this report in the visual deep sky observing section. However after a day it was moved by a mod to the EEVA section and I was informed by pm not to post in the visual observing sections from now on.

Well Matthew, I won’t be making any more posts since I’m now not allowed to post my reports in the visual observing sections (which is where I’ve been posting them for the last 18 months and where I originally posted this report). But I hope you do try night vision. It was fun when we had a go at Regent’s Park a few months back and great from my London back garden but it’s truly amazing from dark (sqm 21+) sites....

Iain, I was genuinely not meaning to demean UK based astronomers, I apologise if my comment gave this impression. I was rather complimenting Gerry’s skies (and observing skills) which I understand give excellent seeing and transparency.

I haven’t thought about higher mags with NV giving darker skies and higher contrast - not sure but maybe... The bigger image scale is the key factor but thinking about it the contrast did seem better as well. I think you’d need to take your 15 inch dob to Canada as well Robert ? I think jetstream’s skies are rather special!

It really depends on what objects you want to view. For smaller objects such as galaxies aperture is king since you can get higher mag (all of 40x ?) and still run at the fast (sub f4) speeds that NV thrives on. For larger objects (eg North American, heart and Soul, California) then the smaller refractors are better since you can frame the object much better. For the largest objects (eg Barnard’s Loop) using the monoculars on their own at 1x is the best and really breathtaking. On Saturday night scanning Cygnus at 1x with the Ha filter attached was amazing. The NV monoculars on their own run at a super fast f1.2 so really bring out faint nebulae. Cygnus was just a mass of fluffy nebulae hound out all other the place. I just scanned from one end of the Milky Way to the other watching the nebulae pop out as I moved the monocular. So in summary, the c11 and refractors are complementary for NV, I need both. But at the moment I’m preferring the c11 since I can view more objects (more smaller objects to see than larger ones) ?

Panther TTS-160 - great mount, takes the c11 with ease when using 8kg weights.

Thanks Gerry. It was at an sqm 21.0 site so dark but with some light pollution. The galaxies were taken earlier in the evening when it wasn’t fully dark and as mentioned in my reply to Stu, the exposures were much less than the nebulae - at the eyepiece the views were better - m51 was definitely in form last night - my personal favourite ever observation of any galaxy. Ive found NV can struggle on the Veil at lower magnifications but last night at 40x it was just immense. The western side is never as good as the eastern with NV but even so there was just so much to look at. It has transformed my approach to observing this object. Its great that the views are very similar even though I’m looking at ha and (I’m guessing) you’re using an oiii filter. Thank you for giving details about the comparison.

The c11 has been a surprise - due to the slow focal ratio its not an obvious NV scope but with the reducer and 55mm plossl it gets down to a respectable f3.3 and still has around 40x magnification. Typically with my 4 inch scopes I’m running at around 10x mag so the jump from 10 to 40x in terms of detail on say the Veil is very large I think. I also find the c11 reasonably easy to setup and portable compared to my 16 inch dob. Regarding the actual visual views I got versus the images shown in my post, as we’ve discussed I try to make the phone images as representative as possible. I find galaxies harder to image and in fact the visual views were better than shown in the images. I could only do 6 second exposures before the sky background got too light. For the nebulae shots, the exposures were 30 secs (50 iso) and can be longer due to the aggressive filtering used. The low iso and longer exposure time do bring out the small detail well in the images but at the eyepiece the details (eg the elephant trunk and the pillars of creation) are still clear but maybe not quite as sharp. At the eyepiece the Veil close ups were really cool, something I haven’t experienced before.

This new moon period seems to me to be the last opportunity to have a good DSO observing session before the nights become too light. And as the forecast was suggesting clear all night, I decided to have a bit of a bumper session. My plan was to start with a few galaxies then move onto Cygnus which would start appearing after midnight. I thought I may even get a shot at the lovely nebula in Sagittarius despite being a bit low. I also wanted to target some smaller objects I haven’t seen with night vision before, so I needed to get a bit of aperture and therefore decided to use my Celestron c11 sct with a 0.75x focal readucer. It actually turned out to be one of the best observing sessions I’ve ever had. I’ve observed a lot of galaxies recently. I think my favourites are the whirlpool and the needle. So I started with these... It was clear immediately that transparency was rather good since the eyepiece views of these two objects were the best I’ve seen. I then went for the black eye galaxy which showed the central eye well. By now Cygnus was beginning to appear in the east. I switched to an Ha filter and went smallish nebulae hunting. First up, another favourite of mine, the Crescent. I hadn’t seen this at a darkish site before and it was very impressive... Next up other small nebulae in Cygnus that I haven’t seen very often before. So in order Tulip, cocoon, bubble, wizard and the cave nebulae. With extra image scale and aperture, I thought it would then be fun to go for some familiar objects to see what extra detail I could get compared with a smaller scope - quite a bit as it turned out.. So here are some alternative higher magnification views of the Veil, the North American nebula and the elephants trunk. It’s been a looooong time since I’ve looked at the Dumbbell - too long, it was lovely last night... I now noticed the Milky Way was arching nicely overhead and had a nice scan with the NV monoculars at 1x. This was fantastic with the good transparency and it also showed me that the Sagittarius nebulae were visible to the south just high enough to see through two houses... So I switched back to the C11 and wrapped up on the lagoon, triffid, eagle (with pillars of creation clearly visible) and swan. I think that’s given me a good setup for August when these objects are available at more accessible times...