Morpheus 1st Light

[Macavity]

I wouldn't worry overmuch. <G> As a Baader Hyperion devotee, I am interested.

It was a splendid review! Maybe one day I will upgrade to these eyepieces.

Whatever, you have to hand it to Baader re. their *Aesthetics*...

Not me who compared Delos to Chicken Drumsticks?

(What's inside counts more of course, but...)

[BillP]

I had the Hyperions for a stretch.  I loved them...especially the fine tuning rings and being able to change their focal lengths.  Very cool idea that was.

[Doc]

LOL I used to loose mine in the field.

[YKSE]

Thanks Bill and Doc for the excellent reports,   any more new findings?

[BillP]

Thanks Bill and Doc for the excellent reports,   any more new findings?

Without Paracorr in the XT10 all the eyepieces behave the same as far as star points.  When moved into the coma field they were overwhelmed with coma being the primary aberration.  No real FC was detected.  For the test of star point behavior I used bright Arcturus.  For DSO viewing, if the star field had brighter stars, like the Mizar complex, then I felt that the TFOV was large enough that the off-axis was into a rather severe portion of the XT10's coma field.  As a result I did not like the appearance of these bright stars in the off-axis of the 14mm and 12.5mm on the Mizar grouping.  However in the other shorter focal lengths I felt it was acceptable.  Turning to M39 which has fairly bright components, again I did not like the 14mm but felt the 12.5mm was fairly good without Paracorr.  And of course all the shorter ones were fine as well.  When turning to fainter stars in clusters like M11, even the 14mm was fine for this as long as you did not position it at the field stop.  The 12.5mm and shorter I felt were all fine for viewing objects similar to this without Paracorr.  Now the XWs handled the coma better, showing tighter star point in the coma field.  So I felt the 10mm and shorter XWs were superior if no Paracorr was going to be used.  I also felt that the 10mm XW specifically did a better job than the 9mm Morpheus.  However, the 7 and 5 XWs and the 6.5 and 4.5 Morpheus were fairly on-par with the XWs as far as how well they handles star points when no Paracorr was in use in the XT10.  M11 was quite spectacular in the XT10 with the Morpheus I must say.  Beautiful cluster!

[YKSE]

Thanks Bill.

Besides astigmatism, coma, lateral color, have you compared other characters, such as transmission, color tone, scatter around bright stars, stray light control,etc?

[jetstream]

I would love to hear how the Morpheus does in the contrast dept- specifically on nebula like the Veil, NA neb etc and also on faint galaxies. Are you going anywhere dark soon Bill?  Maybe the 10XW vs the Morph 9 vs the 10E vs the 10D...

[FLO]

A picture for your thread

[alan potts]

I have 20/20 vision.  Used to be 20/10, so slowly getting worse.  Have no other vision issues.

I can see the sun and thats a fair way away .

[BillP]

Thanks Bill.

Besides astigmatism, coma, lateral color, have you compared other characters, such as transmission, color tone, scatter around bright stars, stray light control,etc?

All of them have lateral color, as most wide fields seem to have.  At the exact same level and behavior as the XWs.  So when the limb of the Moon is nearer the field stop you will get a thin line of yellow on the limb.  And brighter stars show a little color separation if right at the field stop.  Transmission is up there with the best.  Was observing M81 last evening in 9mm Morpheus and 9mm Tak Abbe Ortho and it was as bright and well defined in both.  Using Albireo and the Moon, colors and tones appeared the same in XWs and Morpheus.  So fairly neutral.  Scatter around Saturn and bright stars was very slightly more than the XW.  No ghosts, reflections, flare, glare of any kind with bright objects inside or outside the FOV.  So some good attention to details in the making of these.

[John]

......  Scatter around Saturn and bright stars was very slightly more than the XW. .....

Interesting. What turned me on to the XW's was when a loaned 10mm XW showed less light scatter around Saturn than the 9mm T6 Nagler I had at the time which in turn made Enceladus easier to spot as it was close to the planet. Small issue but it made an impact on me during the sessions I had comparing the two. Enough to ultimately lead to my T6 Nagler's moving on and some Ethoi and XW's coming to stay

[YKSE]

I will be posting a full review in the coming weeks.  Just getting started now.

Something interesting is that I believe the 1st light reported on these that they mentioned fuzzy field stop in the 12.5mm when solar observing.  I noticed this too today in my P.S.T..  Then I tried the 11mm DeLite and it was fuzzy as well!  Then my 10 XW and it was fuzzy as well!!  So seems the little PST is not so compatible with all eyepieces.  Not sure what scope that other observer was using for solar.  At any rate, after seeing the fuzzy field stop in the PST I took out my Vixen 81mm Apo and all had nice and sharp field stops.  So definitely something going on with the PST design and how it reacts with complex positive-negative designs.

Looking at the field stop is not what I normally do when using PST, it has always benn full disk view in the center with Baader zoom, then the field stop are simply too dark to be seen.

Anyway, I got the chance today,  moving the Sun in the edge, Baader zoom showed fuzzy field stop throughout the whole zoom range, which is not at all the case in other scopes (day time or nightlyuse), then I ran through all my 1.25" eyepieces, all except 6mm BCO, showed different grad of vignetting to fuzzy edge, all these eyepieces have otherwise clean field stop in daytime and nightly in my other scopes.

6mm BCO has 5mm field stop, same as blocking filter, coincidence?

Sorry for been a bit off topic, Bill, any more finding about Morpheus as faint fuzzy hunter?

[BillP]

Sorry for been a bit off topic, Bill, any more finding about Morpheus as faint fuzzy hunter?

Observing M81/M82 from my location (Mag 4.5 maybe), neither the 14 XW or 14 Morpheus did any better than the other.  Also tried the 9 Morpheus against the 9 Tak Abbe Ortho and galaxies were just a bright and well portrayed in both.  So they seem to be on-par with the top tier EPs.  Just as good on M57, M13, and other clusters.  So not detecting any noteworthy transmission difference.

[alan potts]

Personally Bill I find transmission very hard to detect differences. I tend to try and find something really faint but finding it in the first place has beaten me more than once, I always found the XW's that I have used for long periods very good in this area, as good a Delos and there must be 10 years between their designs, that speaks volumes for how good they are.

Alan

[jetstream]

A good test for my conditions and equipment is Stephans Quinet ( trio), it will disappear under varying transparency. Of course it helps when this object is in season   lol! I look forward to trying a 9mm Morph on it.

While light transmission may play a role in contrast I don't think it's the only factor.

[BillP]

A picture for your thread

Thanks!  And another back at you