Hi Victor, nice to talk with you today, and thanks so much for all the service. Love the AN/PVS-14!!!
As we discussed, I'm interested in trying to attach this (securely, please) to my 5 inch refracting APO scope, to see what some of the deep sky objects look like. I perused this thread and wonder if someone can link/post more info about using PVS-14 on the night sky. There was a quick reference to Pinnacle tubes not being well suited to astro work - wonder why? The extent of my PVS-14 astro experience is direct viewing the milky way from my fairly dark skies, and I was blown away, to be succinct.
Am presently planning to head out to try to find a step up ring that will let me couple the inside threads of the 14's objective to something that I can slide into the tube of the scope, lock down, and achieve good focus. Will post back here if I have any success.
Edit: a few more ideas:
Has anyone tried taking separate exposures of the same area using R/G/B filters and then combining with a digital program as three images to obtain full color shots of the night sky?? If this is wacked out or plain wrong, I stand corrected, but it seems some of the guys doing imaging with CCD cams are doing something like this. You'd have to capture screen images in B/W and combine them somehow. Don't know if this is even feasible.
Also, is there a risk of damaging Gen III tubes by accidentally scanning across the Moon? Seems that could be pretty intense through a scope - like daylight.
I just measured my eyepiece holders and they're not a good fit for the '14. 14 is like 31mm inside threads and about 35mm outside diameter. The inside threads are very close to the 1 and 1/4 inch finders, but the outside are way off from the 2 inch standard. Any ideas/success people have had would be appreciated.