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REVIEW OF THE BAADER MORPHEUS 12.5MM 76° EYEPIECE


Doc

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REVIEW OF THE BAADER MORPHEUS 12.5MM 76° EYEPIECE

 

 

For this review I will be using the following telescope: a Skywatcher 120ED Esprit which has a focal length of 840mm and a focal ratio of F7. I'm comparing the Baader Morpheus 12.5mm 76° to the following eyepieces:

 

  • Televue Delos 10mm
  • Televue Delos 12mm
  • Televue Delos 14mm
  • University Optics 12.5mm Ortho
 

PACKAGING

 

The packaging was well presented and sturdy.  The eyepiece was packaged in a box with a foam insert protecting it.  The foam can be removed and below the foam you can house the holster, eye cap, and the additional winged eye shield. There were no instructions supplied in the box with the eyepiece sent to me.

 

FEEL AND QUALITY OF EYEPIECE

 

The first thing that struck me when I opened the box was the Baader Morpheus looked like a amalgamation between the Docter UWA 12.5mm eyepiece and the Televue Delos range.  I would love to compare the Baader Morpheus against the Docter UWA 12.5mm as they are the same focal lengths, but unfortunately do not have access to a Docter UWA eyepiece.  However, I do have various eyepieces from the Televue Delos range so will be using them instead. The eyepiece itself feels very light and a quick look at the specification gave the weight as 345g. The eyepiece comes with a M43 thread and this is accessible by removing the eye shield.  I did notice that the eye shield does come adrift pretty easy when removing the eye cap, this occurred at least 4 times during the first night of observing and I finally didn't bother putting the eye cap back on.

 

The eye guard felt a little cheap and fell off a few times during my observations.   The quality could have been better.

 

The engraved writing adorning the eyepiece is meant to glow in the dark, but either this was very subtle and I did not recognise it, or this was not working on my version of the eyepiece.

 

BARREL DESIGN AND DRAW TUBE FIT

 

Baader has designed a unique system for the barrel.  They call them safety kerfs, instead of safety undercuts which most eyepieces now have. They have designed a serrated barrel and it feels tactile and comfortable in the hand. I could imagine these working very well and it's a great design feature that adds style to the eyepiece. When I placed the eyepiece into the focuser of my Skywatcher 120ED Esprit Triplet it was not a perfect fit. I could tell the difference between this and the Televue Delos which I own.  The Delos are sucked in and you can feel the air being displaced, the Baader Morpheus was a much looser fit.

 

LENS AND EYE RELIEF

 

Another thing that I liked about the Baader Morpheus was the huge eye lens.  I like this feature in eyepieces and this one looks very similar to the Televue Delos eye lens.  The coatings had a purple tinge when held up to the light. The eye relief felt very good and I estimate it being very similar to the Televue Delos range of 20mm. What I did not like was there was no way as far as I could tell to increase or decrease the amount of eye relief for the individual user.  That said, I never had any issues regarding eye placement and thus did not suffer any form of kidney beaning.

 

FIELD STOP

 

While observing the sun, I decided to check the field stop of the Baader Morpheus and placed the sun behind the field stop.   While doing this, I could detect that the Morpheus eyepiece field stop appeared blurred and had a ghosting on the edge.  It was also not an inky black colour and did not have any sharpness to it.  When I placed the Televue Delos 12mm into the focuser, I could tell straight away the difference in colour and sharpness.  The field stop in the Delos appeared focused with no blurring at all, and looked inky black and sharp.

I then placed in the University Optics 12.5mm and while not as good as the Delos, the ortho was sharper and darker then the Baader Morpheus. I checked and double-checked around the whole 360° circumference of the field stop and the results were the same.

 


SCATTER

 

While observing Saturn and Vega, I did notice that the lack of light scatter in both the Morpheus and Delos eyepieces is excellent.  The way I tested this was by placing Vega just outside the eyepiece field of view and watching how much lighter the darkness of the background became. The Delos was excellent and I detected no light scatter at all.  The Baader Morpheus was very good to excellent and only a very little touch of light scatter was detected. The sky around Saturn appeared darker in the Televue Delos as well, but the view with the Morpheus was still very pleasing and in my opinion this was a minor detail.

 

COLOUR AND CONTRAST

 

All high end eyepieces need good multi coatings and the Morpheus is no exception.  Wth it's phantom coatings, it delivered really nice neutral looking colour while observing star clusters and double stars. When I compared the Baader Morpheus 12.5mm and the Televue Delos 12mm on Alberio, the stars appeared the same colours in both eyepieces, and to be honest I couldn't really detect which one had the better colour definition. The colour and contrast in star clusters was also very good, with individual stars taking on reds and blues. Both the Televue and Baader were excellent on globular clusters, with the Baader Morpheus able to resolve many of the clusters into individual stars.  When observing the limb of the moon, the contrast was excellent against the blackness of the sky.  The transmission is superb in the Baader Morpheus.  This showed especially while comparing sun spots.  There were two extremely faint sun spots, so small it was hard to pick them up, but I could see them in both eyepieces, which I thought was a very good test.

 

FIELD CURVATURE

 

Both the Baader Morpheus and the Televue Delos were excellent on axis.  The images in the centre of the field of view were sharp and clear with no focus problems at all. While observing, I found by placing Saturn towards the outer edge of the field stop in the Baader Morpheus, the image of Saturn appeared to blur slightly. This did not occur with the Delos which by all accounts has a completely flat field. To correct this, I had to add more in-focus to get the image back in focus.  I also noticed this on star fields especially on the Double Cluster where the field edge was better defined in the Delos compared to the Morpheus. Once I knew this aberration was present, I detected it in lots of different scenarios. It showed up when I let Vega drift from the centre to the edge.  Vega was very sharp and looked like a pin point of light in the centre, but by the time it had drifted to about 10% off the edge I could detect the stars had elongated slightly.  Another area was sunspots.   Once again, they were very sharp in the centre of the field of view and a little out of focus at the edge.  I would like to point out that this is not too bad and in my opinion compared to the older Baader Hyperions, the Morpheus is a vast improvement in that area.

 

CHROMATIC ABERRATIONS

 

When I placed the moon on the edge of the field stop, I could detect a blue/purple edge on the moon's limb.  It was very small but I was a little surprised considering the test scope is a triplet and triplets are not meant to show chromatic aberrations.  This appeared in both the Baader Morpheus and the Televue Delos.  When looking at the moon, view is fantastic in both eyepieces with no chromatic aberration, it's only if you place the limb directly at the very edge of the field stop, then you get chromatic aberrations.

 

CONCLUSIONS

 

I was honoured to be asked to do the first review of this eyepiece and I wasn't quite sure what to expect having owned the Baader Hyperions in the past. Well my initial feelings were very favourable.  The design is sleek, feels very tactile and even though it's light in comparison to some other makes, it feels very well made. Cosmetically the main fault which lets it down in my opinion is the quality of both eye cups.  In my opinion, they lack the feel of more expensive brands.  The rubber feels flimsy and could be better made out of superior materials.  Maybe there should be an extending eye cup to deliver better eye relief for the individual user and this would also prevent light from entering the eye while observing.

 

I love the safety kerfs, they feel and work very well.  I have never seen the like on any eyepiece before and they are truly a unique feature. The illuminated writing on the barrel didn't really work, either that or I had a pre production item and this feature had not been implemented.

 

Visually I compared the Baader Morpheus 12.5mm to a Televue Delos 12mm.  There are two reasons for this.  Firstly, they are of similar focal lengths and secondly there have been many reviews written about the Televue Delos and everyone elevates the eyepiece to the top tier.  In other words it's the eyepiece to beat.

 

In the following categories: colour, contrast, transmission, sharpness, and scatter, I place them pretty much even.  Maybe there was a slight advantage in the scatter department to the Delos, but I was impressed that the Baader Morpheus was as good as this.

 

What lets the Baader Morpheus down is the field stop.  The comparison between the two eyepieces is really evident when the field stop is examined. It is not sharp and finely defined like the Televue Delos field stop is. It is not inky black and when the sun is placed behind the field stop, you can see a double image and a fuzzy field stop.

 

I also discovered by placing the moon very near to the field stop, that chromatic aberrations can be seen.  These appeared as a blue tinge on the limb of the moon. I was surprised to see this in a triplet refractor but I'm certain that because it appeared in both the Baader Morpheus and the Televue Delos that this is more of a refractor problem then an eyepiece one.

 

Field curvature is another problem that I encountered. On axis this eyepiece is excellent, very sharp, lovely colours and basically a joy to use, but place an object such as Saturn near to the field stop and the object is slightly out of focus.  You need in-focus to get the object sharp again. This happened on a range of objects including star fields and sun spots.

 

It's not a huge problem as many eyepieces have this flaw and to me it would not put me off buying this eyepiece  It's a small problem in an otherwise fantastic product. 

 

The Baader Morpheus eyepieces are priced extremely competitively, and are up there amongst the best. I have really enjoyed checking out the wonderful new 12.5mm Morpheus and can thoroughly recommend it.

 

I would like to add that I do not work or have any affiliation to Baader Planetarium or any competitor. I am an amateur astronomer with a passion in this hobby and these are my own personal observations and opinions.

 

Michael Bird (Doc)

East Midlands Stargazers

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Thanks for posting this Mick - great report and lucky you getting your hands on one so early on ! :smiley:

You report will be buzzing around the WWW right now as it's the 1st out there.

Shame about the fuzzy field stop. While it does not affect the eyepiece performance it is a little sloppy and personally I like to see a sharp field stop especially in a premium eyepiece. Obviously most UWA's show some amount of illumination (AKA "ring of fire") around the field stop edge but this sounds different from that.

Otherwise, the Morpheus sounds a very nice addition to the wide angle choices we have :smiley:

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  • 4 weeks later...
 
CHROMATIC ABERRATIONS
 
When I placed the moon on the edge of the field stop, I could detect a blue/purple edge on the moon's limb.  It was very small but I was a little surprised considering the test scope is a triplet and triplets are not meant to show chromatic aberrations.  This appeared in both the Baader Morpheus and the Televue Delos.  When looking at the moon, view is fantastic in both eyepieces with no chromatic aberration, it's only if you place the limb directly at the very edge of the field stop, then you get chromatic aberrations.
 

Doc,

Great review :icon_salut:  Thanks!  On the lunar limb color, this is most likely lateral color.  It is an aberration most all wide field eyepieces have.  Typically the lunar limb will always generate it as will brighter stars when you move them to the far off-axis of the FOV of a wide field.  Generally this is not an issue with the scope so you will see it in Apos as well as Newtonians and SCTs as it is generated by the eyepiece.

Don P just commented on some of the why's behind it, so will just quote what he commented to me on this:

Bill said: 'oddly lateral color in the 8" SCT seemed less than in the 10" Dob' [from my Morpheus review]

Don Replied: 'This is because the lateral color is induced by the wider light cone in the dob.  The rays hit the lenses more obliquely and, hence, "prism" more.

If you compared these eyepieces in 5 different focal ratios from f/5 to f/15, you would see a smoothly declining lateral color as the f/ratio became larger.

It can be due to constructive/destructive interference when light passes through the anti-reflection coatings at angles they weren't designed to handle.

It can be due to a simply prismatic effect when light passes obliquely through a lens which is wedge-shaped at the edge.

It can be due to different refractive indices of glass elements not interacting well when light doesn't pass through straight.

And it can be due to looking through the lens at the wrong angle, corrected by looking through at a different angle.

I guess all could be considered fixed attributes of the eyepiece, since the issue could be replicated at will.

But there are two forms of lateral chromatic aberration: prismatic smear (one color is offset from another) or simple inability to focus the relevant colors simultaneously (one color becomes a fringe to the other, as in normal CA like the purple haze in an achro refractor).  I've seen both in eyepieces.  Prismatic smear may be reduced by looking through the eyepiece at a different angle, while normal CA may not be mitigated even with a slight refocusing of the edge.'

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The blue at the very edge could just be the edge to the BBAR coatings.  Rarely is the last fraction of a mm coated because the lenses are held in a jig to coat.

Just about every eyepiece I've ever seen has a tiny ring of some color right at the field stop.  It can be green or yellow or blue, or whatever.  But this is not an indication there is a problem with the eyepiece.  Were I designing an eyepiece, I'd shrink the aperture on the field stop to cover it, but since it doesn't show up at night on anything dimmer than the Moon, it's really not an issue.

FWIW, it can be seen in daylight by looking through the eyepiece at the sky and then looking at the field stop.

Triplet refractors, by the way, do show a bit of color (often green) at the edge of the field, even if in perfect focus.  If the field is slightly curved, this can be a little more prominent.

I'm currently using a triplet that is free of CA only in perfect focus, and displays some color when slightly out of focus.  it depends on the design as to how fast each color defocuses.

Technically, a triplet is only in focus at 3 colors, and all the rest are a trace defocused.  It's the nature of lenses.  Only purely reflective surfaces can be in focus simultaneously at all colors.

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The blue at the very edge could just be the edge to the BBAR coatings.  Rarely is the last fraction of a mm coated because the lenses are held in a jig to coat.

Just about every eyepiece I've ever seen has a tiny ring of some color right at the field stop.  It can be green or yellow or blue, or whatever.  But this is not an indication there is a problem with the eyepiece.  Were I designing an eyepiece, I'd shrink the aperture on the field stop to cover it, but since it doesn't show up at night on anything dimmer than the Moon, it's really not an issue.

FWIW, it can be seen in daylight by looking through the eyepiece at the sky and then looking at the field stop....

Did you see any "fire" around the field stop of Vixen SSW's Don ?

I'm trying out a set at the moment and they seem to show the least of all the ultra / hyper wides that I've used. Not that it's a major issue anyway with those that do show a bit.

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  • 5 weeks later...

I've got the 9mm Morpheus and noticed the soft field stop aswell.

To be honest though it doesn't bother me at all, the only time a sharp field stop has helped my observing was when used placed the field stop of a Delos between M51 and NGC 5195 to see a change in contrast therefore seeing the 'bridge' for the first time. :)

Awesome review of the Morpheus though Doc (and Bill), your efforts are appreciated.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 years later...

Finding this thread while looking for reviews on the Morpheus 12.5mm. 

From a strictly TFOV appraisal using astronomy.tools, the Vixen LVW 13mm (65) compared to Delos 12mm (70) has nothing in it. I have not tried any Delos, but the Vixen I have and it has a sharp field stop and good eye comfort for placement & relief, & it loses only 7x magnification. 

The Morpheus has 11 deg more AFOV than LVW, 6 more than Delos, & a larger TFOV than either Delos or Vixen. Not a lot, but (again using a.t) it is just large enough for a 10 inch F5 scope to fit both M13 and NGC6207 in. 

That is of course splitting degrees, but star & DSO hopping a patch of sky is made easier - it can never be too easy. 

A new Delos cost around £350. A new Morpheus £150. That is amazing. A bino viewer pair of the latter for less than a single cyclops, with more FOV & £50 to spare. 

Staying with bino viewing, the Morpheus brochure explains how their design & accessories were devised to require "as little back-focus (optical length) as possible..The 2” nosepiece is part of the housing to save even more focal length" on page 6. 

I would be interested to know how well Delos (of any FL) are suited to any make of bv on any telescope. And whether the 12mm Morpheus or Delos in a bv would be better for use with Newtonians. 

 

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I really enjoyed reading Micks' Morpheus review, very thorough.

I bought a 14mm soon afterwards and really enjoyed it, selling my Pentax XW 14mm after a head to head comparison with the Morpheus.

I recently bought the long awaited 17.3mm Morpheus and it is superb, really complementing my LVW22mm and Pentax XL10.5mm.

When you compare the new prices of Morpheus and Delos, the Baader really does offer startling value for money.

By the way, a couple of other remarks: firstly, the Morpheus eyeguard issue, as correctly identified by Mick, has now been fixed. My 17.3mm has two excellent eyeguards which thread onto the eyepiece, a vast improvement. I understand that all other Morpheii production runs now also have the new eyeguards fitted.

Secondly, regarding the sharp/not sharp field stop vs the Delos. The Morpheus has a 76 degree field vs the Delos at 72deg. I suspect that Baader have judged that squeezing the last drop of fov out of the Morpheus made it worth sacrificing an ultra sharp field stop? 

There is no doubt that the 76deg field of the Morpheus looks significantly bigger than the 70 deg field of the Pentax XW (I haven't viewed through a Delos, and am not likely to at that price ?) . The Pentax is very sharp to the edge and has a very sharp field stop - yet I found myself preferring the view through the Morpheus.

Baader did something similar with the Classic Ortho, widening the normal c42 deg Ortho field to 50 degrees, with the trade off being a softer field stop.

I guess you pays your money and you makes your choice?..

Dave

 

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Hi Doc,

That's a good review! I hadn't seen it before.

Around the time when you wrote it I already had a Morpheus 6.5mm. Of course I had the same eye guard problems as you did. I bought the 7.5 mm extension ring and used the winged eye cup for a while. That solved the overly long eye relief problem I had and made the eyepiece much more comfortable to use. Later I went back to the normal eye cup, fixing that with a thin ring of double sided tape to the extension ring. It never came loose after.

Like Dave says, from 2018 onwards the Morphs have a redesigned eye guard and the delivery includes the 7.5 mm eye relief reducer ring. I too got an M17.5 and was really happy with these improvements! 

Two points:

I have a 12mm Delos myself and I never noticed any field curvature with it. So I wonder, could the field curvature you observed originate from your refrarctor? Our different experiences could come from using different telescopes (the Genesis is a Petzval and has a pretty much flat focal plane). Or maybe my eyes accommodate just a tad more than yours, rendering any field curvature in the Delos12 invisible to me.

Also, I was thinking that the Delos, having a shorter focal length and a smaller afov, picks up a smaller image circle than the Morpheus. The edge of the field of the Delos 12mm, is at 91% out of the centre in the view of the Morpheus 12.5mm. (72/76*12/12.5=.91)

The blue ring of fire:

I think I know the reason for the thin blue ring at the edge of the field in negative-positive eyepieces. The field stop is internal. At its place, in-between the Smyth lens and the positive group, the image reaches focus. There, due to lateral chromatic aberration from the Smyth lens, the image in red light is lightly larger than the image at other wavelengths. Hence, the field stop crops the red component of the image a tiny bit more than the other components. After the positive group the chromatic aberration is fixed. There, all colours have come back together, except the missing red rays at the very edge of the field. They are missing because they were cropped off. As a consequence, a thin cyan ring is seen at the very edge of the field.

In the Delos (the 12mm, but also the 8), when a star drifts out of the field it leaves with a brief light-blue flash. I always think that is pretty. Prettier than in any other negative-positive eyepiece I've used.

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I am not so pleased with the 17mm Morpheus so far and I am contemplating returning it, I will give it one more outing first. Although the views are good through the eyepiece my main issue with it is kidney beaning, it really is not good. I have owned the 17.3 Delos and the Morpheus does not deliver comparable pinpoint stars or give the inky black background that the Delos does. So far I do not think the Morpheus comes up anywhere near the Delos at this focal length. But it is a lot less expensive so I may keep it if I can keep my head in statuesque like positions. 

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2 hours ago, Pig said:

my main issue with it is kidney beaning, it really is not good.

Maybe you mean blackouts?

Blackouts are like a curtain being drawn over the view. Vignetting narrows the field of view. Both can be caused by involuntary head movements. When the eye relief is large and you have no tactile feedback, a loss of control over the position of the eye can occur. As mentioned, practice may help.

post-38669-0-30619000-1452697529.gifpost-38669-0-51813000-1452697543.gif

Kidney beaning is caused by spherical aberration of the exit pupil (SAEP), which is absent in my Morpheus 17.5.

post-38669-0-04963300-1452697557.gif

SAEP and the kidney beaning that it causes occurs when the beams leaving the eyepiece do not cross each other in the same place. This does not make the image fuzzy, but it can make the eye placement very difficult for wider exit pupils. In the case of SAEP, even small eye movements can block part of the rays, and the rays that are blocked first are not the outermost ones.  In the image below, the peripheral, green beams enter the observer's pupil unhindered, but one of the red beams is blocked. The result is an off-axis, bean shaped shadow in the image with an unobscured periphery.

post-38669-0-22906900-1452697562.png

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8 hours ago, Ruud said:

Maybe you mean blackouts?

Blackouts are like a curtain being drawn over the view. Vignetting narrows the field of view. Both can be caused by involuntary head movements. When the eye relief is large and you have no tactile feedback, a loss of control over the position of the eye can occur. As mentioned, practice may help.

post-38669-0-30619000-1452697529.gifpost-38669-0-51813000-1452697543.gif

Kidney beaning is caused by spherical aberration of the exit pupil (SAEP), which is absent in my Morpheus 17.5.

post-38669-0-04963300-1452697557.gif

SAEP and the kidney beaning that it causes occurs when the beams leaving the eyepiece do not cross each other in the same place. This does not make the image fuzzy, but it can make the eye placement very difficult for wider exit pupils. In the case of SAEP, even small eye movements can block part of the rays, and the rays that are blocked first are not the outermost ones.  In the image below, the peripheral, green beams enter the observer's pupil unhindered, but one of the red beams is blocked. The result is an off-axis, bean shaped shadow in the image with an unobscured periphery.

post-38669-0-22906900-1452697562.png

I would say from you lovely animations it is more than likely blackouts ? However, I will confirm next time out as I am sure I saw the bean shape ?

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9 hours ago, 25585 said:

Are you distancing your eye enough? The 17 has good eye relief for wearing glasses which might mean people lucky enough not to need them have to adjust appropriately for bare eye distance.  

Yes .... I am familiar with distancing the eye but I have experienced many eyepieces with greater eyerelief than the Morpheus as quoted by the manufacturers and have not had this issue before  ? Bear in mind I have only had a brief spell with the eyepiece so I will need to get used to it. But the stars are not as tac sharp as what I see through my other eyepieces.

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On 25/06/2018 at 18:25, Pig said:

Yes .... I am familiar with distancing the eye but I have experienced many eyepieces with greater eyerelief than the Morpheus as quoted by the manufacturers and have not had this issue before  ? Bear in mind I have only had a brief spell with the eyepiece so I will need to get used to it. But the stars are not as tac sharp as what I see through my other eyepieces.

Now FLO sell TV you can send the Morph back & get refund credit against a Delos from them ; )

However the Morpheus might just not have as deep an eyecup as a Delos. Also maybe due to its big eye lens hardly being recessed, you might get more reflections on it than other eps. 

I have a Vixen LVW 17mm, but also a Nikon 17.5mm NAV SW. Latter has big eye relief as the Morpheus does, and a 70 deg AFOV. They will be interesting to compare.

@Pigyou might be interested in this CN thread comparing Delos & Morpheus. 

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