And it kept getting better. I was in my back yard just a few kilometers north of Montebello (but alas, a bit lower, too) with my 12" LX200 and binoviewer. I did a few bright DSOs early on. But my real target for the night was the Moon. It was just outstanding after about 1am when it got high enough to see well. I was able to use 300x and even 400x at times. But the best views were with 19mm Panoptics at about 200x. Details that had been difficult with my 70mm Pronto the previous night were now great glaring gashes that served as landmarks for the finer details. Rimae Hyginus and Ariadaeus looked like giant freeways. I could have counted dozens of craters in the floor of Clavius (and this is still several days from the best time for that). Rimae Triesnecker, about a day from best lighting, was full of criss-crossing detail. Rima Hadley (site of the Apollo 15 landing) was easy! My Rukl staying in the house; this night it was just too beautiful to work on learning selenography. I just kept wandering around letting my brain take it all in. There is something magical about flying around on the Moon with a binoviewer. Using one on the planets is a little difficult, requiring some effort to fuse the images and accepting a dimmer image. But on the Moon there are no such problems. The Moon may be just a barren rock and right in our backyard by DSO standards but it just blows me away.

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I did try the Vixen/TV zooms with the binoviewer on the Moon. Lest there be any lingering doubt these zoom eyepieces make it dead obvious that the image dims as you use increase the magnification. The ability to choose an image scale on the fly is very handy. My first impression was that the Panoptics were sharper but careful examination failed to show any details not visible in both eyepieces. But I was a little disappointed overall because of the narrow field of view. I've gotten used to the Panoptic experience :-)

BTW, when viewing M13 with the binoviewer I experienced another interesting phenomenon. It *seems* that the contrast between the background and the stars is increased when using both eyes. Now obviously, this is not "real" as would be measured with a photometer. But as we know, the eye/brain is a pretty important part of our astronomical equipment. Who the heck knows what's going on? The bottom line is that two eyes are better than one! (I hasten to add that the view of almost all DSOs is probably better with a single eyepiece, though. Cutting the image brightness by more than half as a binoviewer necessarily must is not good. My not too careful comparison is that more detail is visible with one eyepiece (at similar magnification) than with the binoviewer. Nevertheless, it is a much more comfortable and aesthetically pleasing experience on the brigher objects. Forget it entirely for faint stuff, though.)