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What if you use Binoviewer to have 2 cameras capturing through the same telescope? Is that legal? Will it work? Could you double the amount of data? Can you use it for guiding? |
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| This would be akin to having a dual split nozzle attachment at the gas station in the hope of filling twice quicker. Note that you could fill two cars simultaneously, albeit twice slower. |
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No. A binoviewer first split the light into two halves. The amount of data (amount of photons) from each side is no more than 1/2 of original. So even if you put two cameras on it, you don't double the data. On the other hand, if you can find a dichroic mirror to divert different wavelength of light to different directions, you can use two cameras to image with different filters. This will double the imaging efficiency, in principle, compared to imaging with one filter at a time. |
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I agree with Wei-Hao and Spacetime (aka "Mr. Pictures"). You should also be aware the the International Astronomical Union outlawed this kind of setup many years ago so it would also be illegal to even try it. John |
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John Hayes: what is the enforcement mechanism? Lifetime ban from Astrobin if caught? |
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Arun H:John Hayes: @Salvatore Iovene Will you ban me if I use binoviewer to double the amount of data illegally? |
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Arun H:John Hayes: I've heard that they send the same cops out who enforce the mattress tag rules... John |
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Alien_Enthusiast: No... definitely not like that. That isn't terribly far off from an existing concept though, being an ONAG (On-Axis Guider), which uses a dichroic beam splitter to split all of the optical light towards your primary imaging camera while all the infrared light passes through to a guider which is sensitive over potentially the entire imaging circle. On large instruments this can have some benefits over the more common OAG which uses a much smaller portion of the light cone, albeit taking advantage of the entire spectrum of the scope rather than just the infrared. |
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Charles Hagen:Alien_Enthusiast: I am a very long time ONAG user. The NIR signal from the guide camera generally shows fewer stars than you’ll see with a typical OAG guider, but that is virtually never a problem. The real advantage of ONAG lies in the ability to use astigmatic auto-focusing. THAT is a total game changer. The ONAG splits the beam by wavelength; whereas a binoviewer splits the beam by amplitude. Each channel would get a bit less than half the signal to absolutely no advantage. John |
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imagine 3 mono cams simultaneously acquiring SHO or RGB on the same telescope!  illegal, huh? who's gonna see us? are they gonna send police helicopters to watch us? imagine they make it illegal to acquire data for more than 4 hours, because they'll say "the deep space objects are property of NASA" or imagine that you'll have to rent the deep space objects at a rate of $40/hour, otherwise you go to jail or imagine that you can image them for free, but every 100,000 pixels of your image resolution will cost a dollar or maybe, in the future, we'll not be able to do any AP, because there will be too many chem trails, artificial clouds, smokers, and maybe cow farts. |
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In my humble opinion, The primary lens will always gather the fixed amount of light, no matter what you do after that. If you successes to double the amount of data just inform me and I will ask @Salvatore Iovene to permit that for you as an inventor  |
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If RGB, or for example, RG, or GB is taken at once, with 2 mono cams, then no light is lost, just the colors are split between the 2 cams (because RGB is always being received by the scope) so you get RGB faster then if you did each filter individually. basically the module will look like an ONAG, but the mirror will pass, for example, only R to one cam, and reflect B to the other; it sounds very possible to do; just use a guide scope for guiding, and I think this could be done or maybe somehow, a 3-way RGB beam splitter could be made something like this: (don't laugh)   The mirror shown in black receives RGB, reflects Green into the G cam, but it passes R and B. The mirror shown in red reflects B into the B cam, but it passes R to the R cam. Something like that, idk. Just my crazy imagination  if this is possible, I can imagine the back-focus difficulties and how much this would cost to buy/make.Doesn't this type of thing already exist in space telescopes and high-end observatories? I believe I once saw a UBVIR splitter on a documentary for an observatory with a huge reflector, but I'm not sure. If it does, they should at least make a 2 way splitter for RG or GB, or both, for normal astrophotographers; that would be cool. |
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Alien_Enthusiast: In a way this is no different than amplifying the digital signal by 2x and then splitting it into two. Or 10x and splitting it into 10. Or 100x and splitting it into 100. Definitely a solution for us with limited imaging time due to cloudy weather. |
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| Back in the olden days we had a thing called 3CCDs, with 3 sensors each collecting light in the R-G-B frequency range. It didn't stick... |
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Yes, using dichroic mirrors is exactly how you would do it so that you don’t loose much light during each exposure. Back in the 90’s Phase Shift Technology came out with this same sort of scheme to measure optical phase using polarization to generate four phase shifted images on four cameras. It was very large, it was very difficult to align the cameras, and getting all the polarization components properly adjusted was hard. They sold a few of them (maybe around 10) but as far as I know, they were very difficult to keep running and all of them fell into disuse. Fast forward to the early 2000’s and at 4D Technology, we invented a way to create the polarization equivalent of a RGB sensor. Once the sensor was made, this system was robust, it worked with zoom optics, and it was very easy to use. Clearly in this application, camera alignment isn’t very important, but co-focusing everything would be. You also have to be very careful about managing the optical aberration introduced by the beamsplitters. This idea isn’t at all new but like with the phase sensitive camera, it was replaced by RGB sensors, which are not as light efficient but are much cheaper and easier to set up and use. John |
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The mirror shown in black receives RGB, reflects Green into the G cam, but it passes R and B. A similar concept is the Foveon sensor, which SIgma has been developing for something like two decades. The idea being that a single silicon pixel captures all three colors, but at different depths. There are significant challenges with this, which you can read about here.  |
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Forget the binoviewer! Binodober is the new trend; (aka binoculars lvl 9000)  |
