Baader Hyperion Zoom Quick Look !

[jimlennie]

Hi,

I had a quick opportunity to try out my new Hyperion 8-24mm Zoom last evening. I used it on my ED80 and the only targets were the moon, Jupiter and Antares.

The eyepiece itself exudes quality in that the motions between clicks were perfectly weighted and very positive. The sky was still fairly light when I tried the zoom out so the moon didn't appear to be too brilliant but with the moon just outside the fov I could see no reflections or light scatter in the eyepiece. I looked at some craters at the 8mm setting ( x75 ) and the view was extremely crisp, I then compared it with my Baader 7mm orthoscopic eyepiece on the same crater and I couldn't see much difference apart from the zoom's wider field of view, no detail that was visible in the orthoscopic was missing from the zoom's view. I then tried the zoom with my Televue x2 Barlow and this proved to be excellent on the moon as the view now at x150 was still crisp and colour free and no abberations seemed to be introduced to the overall view.

On Jupiter the view at only x75 was stunning ! I could see at least 5 bands with lots of irregular detail in the NEB and the feeling that I got from this eyepiece is that not much, if any, contrast is lost despite the number of elements in it, even with the barlow the view I had of Jupiter was exceptionally crisp and sharp with no false colour visible despite all that glass in the optical train. Like the moon when comparing the zoom with my orthoscopic eyepiece the detail visible on Jupiters disk didn't change but I perceived that the image was brighter at 8mm than at 7mm with the ortho.

When zooming the focussing remained fixed except as when on 8mm a slight tweak was needed at that setting with or without a barlow.

Antares was quite low and was in some mirk when I viewed it with the zoom, this is not a good star to test the eyepiece as it was twinkling violently at the time. The image was still sharp though but....... at the extreme edge of the fov the star looked like I was using my reflector as Antares suddenly developed a tail, this coma appeared at 24, 20mm and started to lessen at 16 and 12mm but at 8mm ( the widest fov ) the tail disappeared and the image of Antares stayed pin-point across the entire field. Not sure what this means but I'll be looking out for this next time I'm out and can see more stellar objects.

I can't wait to try this Hyperion out on my big refractor and 10" reflector but that'll have to wait a while according to the weather forecast.

I also received a Baader Skysurfer V from FLO but haven't tried this out yet but I'll post impressions of it when I do.

Jim

[geppetto]

Nice report Jim thanks for that 8)

One of those zooms is on my wish list

[anthony]

Sounds good.

[FLO]

Good to see they landed safely

[mikkey99]

Great report

one of these is on my wishlist too

mike