Cassigrain Binoculars

Bob Bond (rgb@garcon.ncube.com)
Thu, 13 Apr 1995 18:08:08 -0700

I've been kicking around the idea of making some 6" or so binoculars. After thinking about it for a while, the idea of making them out of a matched set of cassigrain optics seems to have taken hold. The obvious advantages are compact tube length and a binocular "feel" with the lenses out in front of the eyepieces. Gives them some style points, in my opinion.

The obvious disadvantages are that cassigrain optics tend to be fairly slow in the best of cases, and I'd need a lot of clearance out the back in order to bring the light cones together to the eyepieces. This, along with an (admittedly newtonian) bias I have towards small secondaries, would lead to high magnifcations and a fairly small field of view which seems definitely un-binocular like.

I'd probably buy the optics... Not quite ready to take the plunge, at least not on matched cassigrain mirrors and hyperbolic secondaries.

Any thoughts?

Bob