Has anyone built a binoscope using small refractors?

[omaroo]

I've just gone and done it again. I've bought a second William Optics 66mm Petzval scope to match my original one. I intend to create for myself a binoscope from them. There are some good websites that describe what people have done, but they are all top-end and rather expensive looking. Has anyone ever made a set for themselves? Adjustment of interocular distance with two diagonals is going to be the hard part I think. You don't want any field rotation. It seems that there is a guy in Japan who manufactures a system using two 45 deg erecting prisms one on top of the other to allow the I/O distance to come right down. He also manufactures (or did) a system to allow parallel skewing adjustment between the two OTA's.

Have anyone any experience in this sort of thing?

Cheers

Chris

[GordonCopestake]

I experimented with "tombones" in the past: http://stargazerslounge.co.uk/index.php?topic=7223.0

Didn't really get very far though as you need lots of infocus (or a barlow). You would probably need to use barlows on your rig too, or short tube 'scopes instead

[omaroo]

Thanks Gordon

I had a look at your "tombone" post and it all made sense. I like the way you've used a 45 erecting prism to creat a nice and comfortable viewing angle. How did you go for image alignment? Did you ever sort it?

Cheers

Chris

[GordonCopestake]

With the lack of in focus I abandoned the idea unfortuantly, but it gives you an idea how 2 diagonals (or 4!) can give you the flexibility your project needs. I would think that you would have enough movement to get the right interpupil distance, but it's not as flash as the one in your images