Night vision monoculars

[GavStar]

I've just had a very pleasant 30 mins scanning the sky with this little thing. It turned my poor SW London skies sqm 18 into a mass of thousands of stars - imo it was significantly better than my sqm 21.3 skies in Isle of Wight.

Orion looked lovely and m42 was exceptionally clear at 1x. Looking forward to getting the televue adapter so that I can attach it to my scope and really see what it can do. Apparently it effectively multiplies the aperture of your scope by 3 to 4 times...

[Paz]

Ooooh - what is this sorcery!

[YKSE]

Very interesting stuff, Gav.

Looks like it's available outside the states now? What's your setup? What scopes have you tried?

[Stu]

That looks exciting Gavin! Is yours white phosphor?

[Moonshane]

Cool!

[GavStar]

1 hour ago, YKSE said:

Very interesting stuff, Gav.

Looks like it's available outside the states now? What's your setup? What scopes have you tried?

It's not legal to export good quality USA night vision tubes to the U.K. And that has restricted what you can do in Europe. However, just recently a well regarded European company, Photonis, released a new improved night tube called 4g intens which competes well with the best USA tubes and has none of the legal issues.

So my kit is a pvs-14 made in Luxembourg with a photonis 4g intens White (rather than green) phosphor tube. I haven't compared my tube to the best USA ones for obvious reasons but people in the states have and the photonis does compete well. In particular it has small star halos and low ebi and virtually no speckling (forgotten the technical term). This makes for a very natural normal telescope type view compared to the 3gen USA tubes which i prefer.

It may not have quite the reach in the red bit of the visible spectrum for nebulas compared to the best gen 3 film less USA tubes but it's quite close apparently. I've just got the h alpha filter today for nebula viewing so I will give it go on nebulas when clear. I've also got a 3x magnifier coming soon to give a fov of about 11 degrees for those big nebula.

My tnvc televue adapter should be arriving next week from the USA (first one in Europe apparently) so then I can hook it up to my refractors and use a 55mm plossl to reduce the f ratio in my fracs to around 3 for wide bright viewing.

Lots of things to try over the coming weeks!

[GavStar]

49 minutes ago, Stu said:

That looks exciting Gavin! Is yours white phosphor?

Yes I went for white for 'asthetic' reasons and I'm very pleased I did. You are very welcome to have a go?

[YKSE]

great!

Looking forward to read more of your impressions

[25585]

13 hours ago, GavStar said:

I've just had a very pleasant 30 mins scanning the sky with this little thing. It turned my poor SW London skies sqm 18 into a mass of thousands of stars - imo it was significantly better than my sqm 21.3 skies in Isle of Wight.

Orion looked lovely and m42 was exceptionally clear at 1x. Looking forward to getting the televue adapter so that I can attach it to my scope and really see what it can do. Apparently it effectively multiplies the aperture of your scope by 3 to 4 times...

Where did you buy it from please? Ideal for DSOs?

[niallk]

Thanks for posting - will be following your updates with interest

[GavStar]

43 minutes ago, 25585 said:

Where did you buy it from please? Ideal for DSOs?

Yes this is mostly for DSO viewing particularly large dim nebulas such as barnards loop. But also very good for scanning star fields and the Milky Way.

I bought it direct from actinblack.com in Luxembourg- very helpful and quick service. They have a large range of different tubes to choose from (including green and white vision). Unfortunately the best quality tubes such as the photonis 4g white autogated are not cheap.

[25585]

8 minutes ago, GavStar said:

Yes this is for DSO viewing particularly large dim nebulas such as barnards loop.

I bought it direct from actinblack.com in Luxembourg- very helpful and quick service. They have a large range of different tubes to choose from (including green and white vision). Unfortunately the best quality tubes such as the photonis 4g white autogated are not cheap.

I have seen their site. Stuff as you say is not cheap! Did you choose an off the shelf device, or specify?

[GavStar]

2 minutes ago, 25585 said:

I have seen their site. Stuff as you say is not cheap! Did you choose an off the shelf device, or specify?

I spoke to them over the phone and got full details of the actual NV tubes they had in stock. They emailed the individual specification sheets of various tubes they had in stock and i chose a specific tube from looking at these.

[Highburymark]

Was intrigued by the reports of this technology on the TeleVue stand at NEAF this year. Will be very interesting to hear how you get on with the new gear Gavin.

[PeterW]

All TV have done is make a small thread adapter to connect a PVS14 (common NV monocular) to the top of a TV eyepiece. The advantage comes when you use an eyepiece with a focal length *greater* than 27mm as the system then acts with focal reduction. This is important as NV acts as an imaging system.. faster optics give brighter views, which is needed for the "faint stuff". A 55mm will thus speed up your scope by a factor of 2 without in focus issues that using a focal reducer would give. Mike Lockwood has shown that this even works if you start with a pretty crazy short focal ratio to start with. Previously other people (with non-PVS14 systems) have just taken the front objective off and screwed in a c-1.25" adapter or c-camera lens adapter and operated at prime focus. As we know buying optics with focal ratios below 4 is hard and increasingly costly and focal reducers don't give especially nice results and tend to require tube shortening butchery.

I would expect clouds for a while... the cloud gods will take a rather dim view of this LP killing tech. 

 

PEterW

PS Blame me for luring @GavStarover to the "green side"(white side in his case ;-))

[Scooot]

They look exciting Gav, I’ll be very interested in your reports. If you attach them to a telvue eyepiece I presume you can use it any scope the eyepiece fits? Is the view in colour, if colours detected that is? Excuse my ignorance.

I’m going to do a bit of reading on CN.  

[GavStar]

11 minutes ago, Scooot said:

They look exciting Gav, I’ll be very interested in your reports. If you attach them to a telvue eyepiece I presume you can use it any scope the eyepiece fits? Is the view in colour, if colours detected that is? Excuse my ignorance.

I’m going to do a bit of reading on CN.  

Yes any scope, the key thing is that the televue eyepiece fits dioptrix and has enough eye relief. No colour only black and white since you are looking at a phosphor screen rather than the actual sky - controversial ?

Its lovely and portable - I can just slip it into my pocket and off I go.

My new Tec is fantastic but in some ways I'm more excited about what I will be able to do with these new monoculars in the future.

[Scooot]

18 minutes ago, GavStar said:

Yes any scope, the key thing is that the televue eyepiece fits dioptrix and has enough eye relief. No colour only black and white since you are looking at a phosphor screen rather than the actual sky - controversial ?

Its lovely and portable - I can just slip it into my pocket and off I go.

My new Tec is fantastic but in some ways I'm more excited about what I will be able to do with these new monoculars in the future.

I use Dioptrx so that’s great. I’ve just been justifying the expense to myself  

 

[YKSE]

Gavin,

Can you help with some newbie questions?

How's the NV monocular connected for visual? i.e.

1. scope side: barrel or thread? diameter? if thread, male or female?

2. Eyepiece side: barrel or thread? diameter? if thread, male or female?

 

[PeterW]

Scope side, either:

1)eyepiece projection with the  units objective pointed into (or attached if you have a suitable adapter) an eyepiece (>>27mm focal length preferred).

2) with its objective lens removed (if possible) and a scope (eg1.25” or 2”) or camera lens adapter connected, plugnintonacopempike an eyepiece, works like a camera at prime focus.

you don’t do anything with its eyepiece side... use as it comes.

you only put filters in the scope side of the system and ideally where the light is not too divergent/convergent as this affects narrow band filter performance. The Cloudynights posters have everything worked out.

Peter

[YKSE]

Thanks Peter

So the TV adapter is used for connecting a 2" 55mm EP between the scope and the monocular?

[PeterW]

For screw connecting a PVS14 to a Televue eyepiece. Any other combination can be bitched together using AMA few hours and a 3D printer to make a suitable pushfit adapter.

 

peter

[YKSE]

Thanks for the clarification Peter.

The connection from NVD, is the C-mount thread most common? I seem to recall that Eddgie mentioned the C-mount adaptation on the other forum.

[PeterW]

Many units have a c-thread, but the cool cats are moving from prime focus to loooonnngggh focal length eyepiece projection. Got to see how @GavStar gets on with it.

 

peter

[25585]

Long focal length eps, a subject dear to my eyes

Tele Vue make a few over 27mm with longish eye relief. 35 and 41 Panoptics, 55, 40 and 32 mm Plossls. 

Presumably a precisely placed attatchment over one will not have kidney bean issues.

What specifications, budget and know-how is needed for the monocular, and what size of scope matters to get most out of it all - within reason of course?