Re: [ATM] front surface mirrors for binoculars

[Jarvis Krumbein <jkoptic@juno.com>]

Hi Dave,

In the early days of space shots and satellite viewing, one of the
techniques was to have a fairly large front surface mirror on a table
top.  Your binoculars were mounted on a stand on the table and viewing
down at a 45 degree angle to pick up the sky reflected by the mirror. 
This was very comfortable and you could view for hours.  A large mirror
from a Xerox copier was often used.  I don't see why this kind of
arrangement could not be used today.

Jarvis Krumbein

On Sat, 4 Mar 2006 14:45:54 -0800 "David Margrave"
<david.margrave@gmail.com> writes:
> I like binocular viewing but hate having my neck craned at abnormal 
> angles.
> I know that one option is to get a reclining lawnchair and 
> parallelogram
> binocular mount, but I was thinking of another scheme.  I got a 
> couple front
> surface mirrors salvaged from overhead projectors.  I'm thinking 
> that I'll
> make an arrangement to hold these mirrors in front of the 
> objectives,
> rigidly at a 45 degree angle to the optical axis of the binos.  I'm
> envisioning something that could still be mounted on a normal 
> tripod, sort
> of like a standard bino tripod mount with another 'leg' extending 
> out
> infront of the objectives and holding the mirrors.   I'm comfortable 
> with
> mechanical part of this (threaded mounts, etc).  No problem, as 
> opposed to
> the optical aspects.
> 
> I'm wondering about the variables and how critical they are?  IF the 
> planes
> of the two front surface mirrors are not perfectly parallel is this 
> going to
> work?  How much can the human brain accomodate to merge separate 
> images that
> may be slightly off-axis?  Am I going to have to painstakingly 
> ensure
> perfect parallelism, or make provisions for having one of the 
> mirrors
> adjustable?   It would be nice to have just one large front surface 
> mirror
> that would span both objectives, but I haven't come across one yet.  
> I know
> there are commercial products, but I am a  cheapskate and I'm trying 
> not to
> spend real any money on this.
> 
> thanks,
> 
> dave
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