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 Use Night Vision Equipment On A Telescope

I was just curious because when I'm out in the countryside and take along a nightvision monocular and look up at the stars I can see a lot more than with the naked eye. I've also seen some (what seems to be) pretty weird stuff when doing it.

I had an astronomy teacher who said that the night vision would be overwhelmed with the amount of infra-red light the telescope would pick up, but I'm not sure I neccessarily believe him. Does it work, or can you make it work with some kind of modification?

You can do it, but with a telescope it doesn't buy you as much.

The purpose of an image intensifier is to make dim thing brighter. That's also the primary purpose of the telescope's objective lens (or mirror). But the image intensifier has a big drawback: the image is lower resolution than you can get with your eye. Pinpoints of light widen out into blobs with the intensifier. In the telescope, pinpoints remain pinpoints, so you can see much more detail in the telescope alone than you can with the intensifier.

For that reason, not many people use an image intensifier with a telescope. But there are a few applications where fine detail is not needed and greater brightness is important, like searching for supernovae in distant galaxies. Some amateurs in those pursuits have used intensifiers to good effect.

KEY  WORDS:Monocular Telescope

Binoculars, Monocular Telescope, Monocular Telescope

Read more: http://www.nbbinoculars.com/blog/

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