Month: July 2019

TNVC Night Vision Direct from Tele Vue

(TNV-1400) TNV/PVS-14 L3 Gen3 Un-Filmed White Phosphor

Tele Vue has taken its collaboration with Tactical Night Vision Company one step further! We are happy to announce that we now offer their TNV/PVS-14 L3 Gen3 Un-Filmed White Phosphor night vision monocular plus accessories direct from Tele Vue.

Al Nagler Goes “Full Circle” on Night Vision
Back in 1971, while an employee of Farrand Optical Company, Al Nagler was given the task of designing an eyepiece for a spiffy-new, high-tech gadget designed by ITT Corporation: a night vision device. He designed an eyepiece to view the 40° field of view created by the image intensifier tube. Now, after almost 40-years of evolution, the latest generation night vision  monocular that Tele Vue is selling uses an eyepiece at least inspired by Al’s Design — if not exactly the same!
 

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50-Years After Apollo: One of Al Nagler’s Designs is Scheduled for Launch! – P.U.N.C.H.

Apollo 11 made a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean 50-years ago today after an 8-day mission.  Thus ended the mission that made the historic first manned landing on the Moon with the Lunar Module named Eagle. 
The iconic image of the Earth rising over the Moon was made 1968 when Apollo 8 became the first manned craft to orbit the Moon. The mission’s impact is explained in this New York Times article.
Over the past 8-days, we’ve been reminded of the audacious journey, made 50-years ago, to set foot on Earth’s nearest neighbor: the Moon. A constant in our sky, this orb has been gazed upon by countless generations of people who thought it beyond reach. The Apollo moon landings changed all that and left a mark on our human psych. The phrase “Moonshot project,” for a large-scale, ground-breaking endeavor has been in the public lexicon ever since. Images looking back at Earth from the Apollo missions put our planet in a new perspective and prompted American poet Archibald MacLeish to write: “To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold — brothers who know now they are truly brothers.”
 

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02 July 2019 Total Solar Eclipse Images

Sunset during the end of the eclipse by Instagram user Wijaya Sukwanto. All rights reserved. Imaged through filtered Tele Vue-76 APO scope with Powermate image amplifier.

This past July’s Total Solar Eclipse was a southern hemisphere event with most of the path over the open waters of the Pacific. Starting east of New Zealand, the eclipse path made continental landfall in Chile and crossed over some major astronomical facilities in the Elqui Valley before entering Argentina. With the Sun setting and close to the horizon the shadow path crossed Argentina in just 3-minutes. The centerline just missed the capital city of Buenos Aires.  

Solar Eclipse maps and data courtesy of Fred Espenak and Jean Meeus, “Five Millennium Catalog of Solar Eclipses: -1999 to +3000” (NASA/TP-2008-214170). Green lines denote limits of visibility. Key to Solar Eclipse Figures

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Clyde Bone and His Two Unusual Mersenne Telescopes!

In this guest blog post, Ted Hume describes two telescopes designed and built by Clyde Bone. At first they appear to be “big-Dobs.” However, look close and you’ll note they don’t require “shaky ladders” as the final focus is through Tele Vue telescopes near ground-level. They also serve as their own finders. Read on about these fascinating instruments and how they could be yours!

Blue 20-inch, f/5 Mersenne telescope uses a Tele Vue Genesis refractor for its “eyepiece” and red 30-inch, f/5 big-brother (image shown reversed) uses Tele Vue-140 refractor. No need to climb ladders to view through these! Both scopes built by Clyde Bone. Ted Hume is at the eyepiece. Images by the author with all rights reserved.

Clyde M. Bone, Jr. (1928 − 2012) of San Angelo, Texas designed and built two Mersenne telescopes, first a 20-inch and then a 30-inch.

His career included working for the Texas Border Commission in the Big Bend area of Texas, geologist for an oil company ─ who flew a light plane to drilling sites and landed on dirt roads, science teacher at a Texas high school and in the Texas prison system. When he decided to build a Mersenne telescope, he was retired and spent a year studying optics. Then he was ready.

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