I watched the demo movie on the website and was not impressed, felt like they were cheating They would show a faint fuzzy and then build up to the dumbell or M13. While the color in the dumbell was sweet, traditionally you would see all of the dumbell or M13 as soon as you looked into any scope with a decent eyepiece and/or filter. Discussions about resolving M13 to the core abound at star parties. One concern is, does it continue to build up over time, thus saturating the image? Can you can control that? I look forward to Mark Shelton's report. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Chuck Hards" <chuck.hards@gmail.com> To: "Joe Bauman" <josephmbauman@yahoo.com>, "Utah Astronomy" <utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> Sent: Monday, January 2, 2017 1:00:50 PM Subject: Re: [Utah-astronomy] Unistellar Optics demo The way I understand it, it's not a traditional image-intensifying device using cathode-ray tubes, like most night-vision scopes. It is a camera that gathers multiple images and stacks them automatically, then displays the result on an LCD or LED screen, in a very small, eyepiece-sized package. Basically the same thing as traditional digital imaging but all done in near-real time. The screen brightness is hopefully adjustable so as to not ruin one's night vision. This is a new branch of visual astronomy called "Electronically-Assisted Astronomy". It's proponents are a very distinct crowd from traditional digital imagers. There is a dedicated forum on Cloudy Nights for this new activity, check it out if you would like to know more. Your humble moderator here on Utah-Astronomy is also an Administrator on Cloudy Nights. Purists would argue that it's still imaging and the physical connection with the object being viewed is lost. For people with impaired vision, however, it could be a real boon, or those without access to large-aperture telescopes who want to see the really faint stuff. I'm reserving my opinion until I can actually try one of these units out. Should be at least interesting to see the images, even if it doesn't ultimately dovetail with my particular observing habits. On Mon, Jan 2, 2017 at 11:30 AM, Joe Bauman via Utah-Astronomy < utah-astronomy@mailman.xmission.com> wrote:
It sounds feasible but very hard to do. Once I was out with my telescope at night when a police officer drove up to see what I was doing. We got to talking about astronomy when he showed me his night vision scope and said it would really show up the stars. I tried it -- BLAM! -- blinding green light that showed a few stars and destroyed my night vision in that eye. I can see how that sort of device could be controlled with a telescope connection but I'd bet it can't show color.
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