Telescope Reviews: What Binoviewer Would Be "Best" In A C-14 ?

Dinner (or supper) was yummy and I was out in the observatory before 8 PM. Guess what? The moon was still being blocked by the big tree so I had to look through the branches and leaves to see it. What a sight! I would try the binoviewer on objects not blocked by trees and check out the moon later.

The colors in double stars were much richer because splitting the light into 2 halves brought the light levels down enough to see the colors rather than a bright light that had some color in it. The C-14 gathers enough light that brighter objects become very bright and bright objects become very, very, very bright. Even with the brightness being cut in half for each eyepiece open star clusters looked a whole lot more detailed.

Cupping my hands around my eyes made the viewing more pleasurable. I also decided an eyepiece with less eye relief would help, too. Earlier this year I had a bad cataract removed and later the same month I had a developing cataract removed from the other eye. I've had to wear glasses for 55 years until then. The eye relief of the W.O. eyepieces would be perfect for someone with glasses. It's not bad for someone without glasses, too.

Finally the moon came out fron behind the tree and I was seeing details I had never seen before. The almost full moon not being so bright helped out a lot and seeing it with both eyes helped out even more.

Later Jupiter was visible without the big tree in the way. Again, using both eyes and having the image not so bright meant a lot more detail could be seen.

Then it was off to bed and a little sleep until I got up at 4 AM to see Jupiter high in the sky and Orion high enough in the sky that no big tree would be in the way.

Seeing at 200+X in the C-14 with the binoviewer is different than the 100+X I was getting with the C-8. There was more detail easily seen, but not nearly as much as when the seeing is really good. When the seeing is really good the C-14 easily shows the disks of Jupiter's 4 big moons and some detail on them as well. This was the first time I wished I could have a lower power on the binoviewer.

The Orion Nebula looked spectacular with one eye and easily more than twice as spectacular using both eyes. The E star of the trapezium was easily seen, but the F star was only caught in fleeting glimpses due to atmospheric seeing non perfection at the time.

I wanted to see a wider view so I put on my Lumicon Giant EZ guider on the C-14 with a 2" star diagonal and the WO Binoviewer. Rats! The focus for infinity was just barely out of reach and it was so close, too. I took off the star diagonal and put the W.O. Binoviewer in the back of the giant EZ Guider and it reached focus! It was the most spectacular view I've ever had of the Orion Nebula! My neck started to hurt while I had to bend myself lower to be able to look through the straight through binoviewer set up.

The next night I took a 24mm Brandon and a 25mm Celestron eyepiece and put them in the binoviewer. I could actually merge the 2 images into 1 image. 24mm Panoptics (or something similar) would give about the same spectacular view and magnification with the giant EZ Guider and a straight through optical path if the WO binoviewers had a larger clear aperture.