Hi All!
I'm thinking that maybe NV would be a good way to observe at my age (69) and stage (fit enough but not overly so). I was looking at a 16" or 18" scope and that would be nice but I would probably have to travel 2 hours to get to suitably dark skies to make best use of a big scope. My home is about Bortle 4.5 for what it's worth.
I have a Comet Hunter and I use it on an iOptron AZMP and it works pretty well that way.
Instead of spending a lot of money for a large-ish scope, I'm wondering if going the NV route would serve me better.
Sooooo...does anyone have experience using a NV device on a Comet Hunter scope? Any recommendations for NV devices that would work well with the Comet Hunter?
Thx for any and all thoughts!
Bill
Hello Bill,
My Night Vision Device is by far the best money that I have ever spent for my Backyard Astromoy Project. These Light intensifies will greatly enhance the capabilities of most any Telsscope. If you were to do a bit of research here on CN, you will find that some scopes because of design features work better than others or work better for one type of an object being viewed. Because of this, most of us have more than one type of scope that we will choose depending on the targets. I recently purchased an Aperturs Carbonstar 150 F /4.9 Newt for Nebulae. One of the first things that you will learn on first light is, many of these Nebulae are gigantic and to try and fit these Nebulae you need a scope that has a wide field of views and the longest focal length eyepiece you can get like a Tele Vue 55mm/67mm Plossl. Many will choose a fast Newt for this application. I will report that my Apertura Carbonstar 150 works like an Ace for larg targets like Nebulae, Open Clusters, and the Milkyway. When it come to Galaxies I use a 12.5" Dob or my C8 Edge HD but mostly choose to use one of my APO's. The only drawback to using a Newt with a PVS 14 Afocally is, you wind up with a very long focuser stack and your scopes focuser needs to be strong to support it.
Buying a night vision device. Is a big expenditure. My entire night vision set up cost around $5000.00 easily ( Well worth it ) warning, this is not one of those things to go cheap on. Everything rest on the tube and generally the better the tube specs the higher the cost. The better the tube specs, the better you will see. I made this mistake with my first device that cost me $3000.00 and it was a lowsey device for NVA. My next device was $1250.00 more and believe me the difference was amazing a completely different animal. I bought mine from NV Devices Inc and this company right by me. I simply told them I needed a PVS14 with Astronomy spec tube and NV Devices Inc. Made it happen, there are other companies that are front and center like TVNC, Kosher Surplus. Both NV Devices Inc and TVNC will let you request the Tube specs that you want, Kosher Surplus advertises Tubes and you can pick out the one, you buy it and have it in hand in a few days but only has a two year warrantee on the device body and a one year on the Tube. NV Devices Inc. and TVNC will take a few months. TVNC has a limited Lifetime Warrantee and NV Devices has a 10 year warrantee that has come in handy and again NV Devices Inc took good care of me. Even though others here have had good luck from Kosher Surplus, their warrantee is scrappy.
The long afocal stack on my Apertura Carbonstar. It works fine but is a bit ridiculous.
https://www.nvdevice...sion-monocular/
https://tnvc.com/sho...ion-monoculars/
HAPPY SKIES AND KEEP LOOKING UP Jethro
Edited by Jethro7, 26 August 2024 - 03:42 PM.
