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Morpheus 14mm under the stars, finally: shoot-out with Naglers


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Finally I could see a reasonable number of stars, including the Pleiades, so I decided to have a little shoot-out between the Morpheus 14mm and Naglers 12T4 and 17T4. I used the APM 80mm F/6 as scope because it is faster than the C8, so will show aberrations more clearly, and it doesn't need any cool down time. I lined the scope up on the Pleiades, which filled the field of view of the Morpheus quite nicely. The EP gave pleasing views with pin-sharp stars over abour 80-85% of the FOV, beyond that there seemed to be a degree of defocus or coma, with stars showing slight comet-like shapes radiating away from centre. Changing focus improved the edge stars very nicely, at the expense of centre sharpness, so this looks most like field curvature. This might of course come from the scope, so I put in the Nagler 17T4, arguably one of the best Naglers available. Its wider field should show up field curvature from the scope more than the 14mm Morpheus. However, it showed perfect stars right to the edge, no field curvature, coma, or astigmatism visible. The Nagler 12T4 showed the same result: perfect stars across the field. Just to make sure, I used an XW10 as final reference and that too showed a stunningly even field. The Nagler 12T4 did give some hints of a more yellow tone, with the Morpheus being a bit more neutral, but the difference is quite subtle.

All in all the Morpheus is a good performer in this scope, showing very pleasing views, but it is not quite in the same leage as the Naglers (which cost considerably more, I should add). I will see how it fares on planetary nebulae and small galaxies in the C8, where transmission is a bit more important than star sharpness at the edges. At F/10 the effect may be less noticeable.

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Very interesting feedback on these eyepieces Michael.

I have to say that I though the Morpheus might be sharp right across the field at F/6.

I had expected as much, but there seems to be this field curvature issue. Not massive, but it's there.  I even used my non-varifocal computer glasses (uniformly corrected to sharp vision at about 1.2m) to avoid any issues stemming from the varifocal nature of my normal glasses. It is definitely there, and absent in the Naglers

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