Telescope Reviews: Re: ATM'ing binoculars from SN6's

I think your images would not be oriented the same. Please, please teach yourself a way to figure out reflections, with diagrams, a card-paper and TP-tube mockup, whatever.

The usual way to make a newtonian into binocular is with a third (tertiary) mirror above each focuser, sending the light skywards, parallel to the OTA's axis. When viewing, the back of your head is in the direction of what you see. The image is reversed due to three reflections.

The OTAs can be in any relative orientation in axial rotation. Consequently, one of the ways to adjust interpupillary distance (IPD) is to rotate the tubes.

One thing about those SNs is the high focal plane, enabling SLR cameras and other deep-focal devices to be used, after taking out the drawtube extension. This gives you some distance for a bino-scope's tertiary mirrors, which you'd put on *without* the drawtube extension. (I still don't know for certain there's enough distance. You might want to try with one SN and a borrowed diagonal.)

Yes, at f/5, 2-inch eyepieces would be good to be able to use. But 2-inch star diagonals would collide with each other at such wide IPDs as to be useless. But if you were to go up a step to the 8-inch f/4, you could skip the trouble and use 1.25-inch eyepieces and diagonals, and probably end up with a finished bino and a good range of eyepiece pairs for less total cost! (A little less total field of view, though.)

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