Well, what a totally amazing evening coupling a pair of Televue 15mm Delite eyepieces to PVS-14 night vision monoculars and putting this night vision equipped eyepiece pair on the Kasai Stella-Bino 50 !
There is practically no deep sky object on the Collin's Atlas that is out of the reach of this setup, used handheld, in Bortle 6 with less than perfect transparency. This was my first time out using this setup. It takes a few minutes to focus and eliminate double vision by rotating the left barrel and locking it down. Once that is done, stars are absolutely pinpoint. The 50mm objectives of this binocular provide very sharp, crisp images. And the FOV is much brighter than a normal prism binocular, even using regular eyepieces.
The only strange thing to a binocular user is that your FOV is upside down and backwards.... like an astronomical telescope view. For some reason, I did not find this the least bit troublesome. I spent a couple of hours looking at the sky and finding objects from memory, using this setup hand held. I observed and studied each of the following: M22, the Lagoon and Trifid nebulas, the Omega and Eagle nebulas, M27, the Anglefish cluster, NGC 7331 the largest galaxy in the Deerlick group, M81, M82, M51, M101, the Heart nebula, the Soul nebula, the Wizard nebula, the Elephant trunk nebula, the North American nebula, the Pelican Nebula, M31 (amazing three dimensional view of the whole galaxy.... not just the core... and its two satellites... and so very three dimensional), plus many clusters with nebulosity that I didn't take the time to identify.
And I'm in suburbia... Bortle 6. The only thing in my favor was that there was no moon.
I mean this is a 50mm prismless binocular... used handheld... and not only could I see each of the targets listed above... I could see a great deal of detail in each of them. My eyepiece pair provided about 13x which is about right. Objects are easy to find and the magnification is sufficient for a good view. I've literally never seen anything like it. True, I've used night vision with the same eyepiece pair in my BTs mounted... but that is a slow experience... with these 50mm binos used hand held you can cover the whole sky freely and pop from target to target in short order.... it is a completely different experience.
I found it helpful to hold them by the ends of the barrels, resting the eyepieces on my orbits. I used both a zero gravity chair (for zenith objects) and a regular chair for the other objects. I think I wasn't confused by the orientation of the FOV because I didn't particularly use the FOV to direct my steering. I steered independently of the FOV, making the necessary arm motions to bring the binocular to where I wanted it. And I learned to look at a point in the sky and bring the binoculars up to my eyes... and voila... that area appeared in the FOV. It takes a little practice.
So, I hope I have conveyed some of the experience of using these Kasai Stella-Bino 50 binoculars equipped with night vision. The only thing I want to add is that to get my Televue 15mm Delite eyepieces to focus, I had to pull them up 3/8" (i.e. so that the bottom 3/8" of the barrel showed above the turrets.... and lock them in place with the thumbscrews). The weight of the binoculars in your hands isn't very different from my Oberwerk 15x70 Deluxe binos. I would guess the setup weighs roughly 4 lbs. I could hold them for a reasonable amount of time without a rest. I didn't have any issues with shaking or tremor of the FOV at 13x. Finally I need to add that I used a 12nm H alpha filter on one eyepiece and a 684nm IR pass filter on the other eyepiece.
Rick