Ok, at the prompting from this thread, I just took my Mod 3 into a dark closet and focused it on the white ceiling and turned on the illumminator.
Both tubes showed honeycomb but I had to look for it. One tube was a bit more pronounced than the other and I had to kind of close focus my eyes to see it well which gave me eye strain, but when I looked specifically for it, I was able to see honeycomb in both tubes, but only with the illuminator on.
I have not ever noticed it under normal observing, and since I know it is pretty common to see under these conditions (even, bright field with illuminator on) I guess I never thought that I should go looking for it because I would likely see it.
Perhaps I simply have learned to ignore it or something because in normal observing, I have never noticed it at all.
I generally run with a bit less than full gain, and I pretty much have to run filters but my sky is very bright even with filters and I have not noticed it at all.
I had to force myself to close focus to be able to see the honeycomb. If I had anything in the field, it totally went away because my eye was drawn to the object in the field.
I have a headache now.. LOL.
If you look for honeycomb, my guess is that you will see it in most devices, and maybe it is one of those things that some people can't "Unsee"
I had the Denkmeier 3D LOA eyepeices, and once I started to see the array artificats, I could not unsee them.
I have seen honeycomb though in most devices, and I guess maybe I have learned to unsee it, but more than that, I stopped looking for it because if you look for it, it would appear that you will see it. I have seen it in pretty much every tube to some degree but almost always under the same artificial condition of a uniform surface with the illuimnator turned on.
I was completely unaware of it until 10 minutes ago, but the moment I stopped looking for it in the eyepieces, I stopped seeing it. It is like I had to close focus to see and if I put the light fixture into the field and my eye took the target in, I could no longer really force my eye to focus on the honeycomb.
I doubt that this post will do anything to make people feel better about seeing honeycomb but when I looked for it, I was able to see it too, though in normal observing, I was absolutely unaware of it. It could be simply that my brain has suppressed it, but in my case, the honeycomb I do think is quite minimal.
Don't make me go look for the little black dots at the intersections. My head still hurts. I am sure if I looked, I would see them too... LOL..
Edited by Eddgie, 09 September 2016 - 09:32 AM.