Baader Morpheus 6.5mm first use!

[bishbosh]

Hi all,

I bought this eyepiece what seems like months ago but never got a chance to use it with all the recent bad weather. Anyway, Friday night, clear sky and I thought 'it's now or never!'

So I drag the HEQ5 Pro downstairs - not easy with a poorly arm and go back up for the EPs and the telescope. I planned to observe only this session so once the scope was set up I did a basic polar alignment. Then I did a 2 star alignment as Vega - one of the few stars I know - happened to be behind a tree

Then came the moment, took the Morpheus out of it's case, the lens sparkling just waiting to be used. I slipped it into the focusser and nothing. Just a white disc reminiscent of those mirrors that doctors stick to their heads. Then realised I was looking at the secondary mirror or something like that. After sliding the EP further out of the focusser I was able to focus this disc into a pinpoint of light Time to go star hopping.

With my scope this EP gives approx 154x magnification compared to the Skywatcher 28mm which gives about 36x

M39 open cluster - amazing! Never seen so many stars in one place! Neptune was sadly behind my house in the southern sky and I have a north facing garden but I did manage to find Uranus which appeared as a small blue disc. Pleiades was less impressive with this EP than with the Skywatcher simply because of the narrower field of view, but Andromeda and the Orion nebula showed a lot more detail

Tried to find Uranus again but it was faint - then realised the sky was getting quite hazy and my hands were falling off with the cold so I called it a night.

So, how did it compare to the much cheaper 28mm? I found the 28mm easier to focus. Of course with higher magnification then vibrations are also magnified so that could explain the difficulty I had with focussing. Just breathing nearby seemed to make the scope wobble.

I found that with the Morpheus if your eye is only slightly off axis or to close or far away then you get blackness. Is this the kidney bean effect? The 28mm seems to be more forgiving in this respect.

However I did really like the fact I finally spotted a planet, can't wait for a clear morning to see Venus or Jupiter

In conclusion I'm very happy with this EP, enjoyment can only be increased by keeping my eye still and perhaps learning to use it properly

Cheers

[John]

Interesting report

It's virtually impossible to compare eyepieces of such different focal lengths though. Even 1-2mm difference makes comparisons difficult I find. 28mm and 6.5mm eyepieces are tools for different purposes. The focal positions of such differing designs will be quite different too, as you found.

The Morpheus has had great reviews from others who have tried it so I'm sure it's a winner.

You just have to get the others in the range now !

[laudropb]

Nice report. Thinking of getting this ep myself.

[alan potts]

A very nice report and I echo John's words on making comparisons with different eyepieces greater than a few millimeters apart. Messier 45 I find is always better at a very low power, it is about 1.5 degrees in size so you need at least that to frame it, M31 is even bigger at 3 degrees I believe, I find that is best in short scopes offering wide fields and bino's.

Alan

[swamp thing]

I found that with the Morpheus if your eye is only slightly off axis or to close or far away then you get blackness. Is this the kidney bean effect? 

Certainly sounds like it to me. Annoying isn't it

Nice report BTW 

[An Essex UK Person]

Good report....     Ive just taken delivery of the Morpheus 6.5mm 12.7mm and i'm awaiting the 17.7mm (to be in stock March)..  Not tried them out yet but may get a break in the cloud this weekend.

So all I can tell you so far is that they have a quality look and feel, the packaging is better than my wife's Louis Vuitton purse packaging.

[Ruud]

Hi bishbosh,

congratulations on the Morpheus. I've had the 6.5 mm for a few months now and I'm really happy with it!

About how you needed to slide the EP out of the focuser to get a sharp image: When you use the eyepiece in a 2" focuser it is very non-parfocal with other eyepieces. It sinks in way too deep in the focuser. When you use it with a 1.25" adapter, the eyepiece focuses normally and becomes much more parfocal. Like the Delos, the Morpheus is a true 1.25" eyepiece. 

I think the darkening of the field when your eye is in the wrong place is not the kidney bean effect, but blackout. As far as I can tell, the Morpheus 6.5 has no kidney beaning. I use it mostly in an f/5 (exit pupil 1.3 mm).

For a very short while, I too had some same blackout issues with my Morpheus. Blackout occurs when your pupil is in the wrong place with respect to the exit pupil of the eyepiece. The whole field disappears more or less at once, as if a curtain is rapidly drawn over it from one side of the view to the other. This is how this happens:

Another undesired effect in eyepiece usage is vignetting. This occurs when your eye is too close in or too far out. In both cases, the outer rays coming from the eyepiece cannot enter your pupil:

The rubber eyecup of the Morpheus blocks extraneous light well, but does not reach high enough to function as a useful eye position guide. If were taller, a tactile feedback from it would reduce the chance of both blackouts and vignetting. The Delos is not ideal either. Even though its eyecup can be screwed up high enough, the rubber eyecup is rather tough and does not flex much at all. As a result, when it is set for an ideal position for looking straight in, it is not in an ideal position for looking in with your head at other angles (it needs to be lower for looking in at oblique angles). I've given up changing the eyecup position of my Delos eyepieces. Instead, I've set them slightly too low for looking in at a straight angle, so that I won't have to lower them for other angles of my head. As a consequence, often the Delos too fails to give me tactile feedback for positioning my eye correctly. I found this a nuisance at first, but after getting used to the eyepiece, it no longer bothers me and I find the Delos comfortable to use. Having used the Delos with eyecups too low for looking straight in, getting used to the Morpheus took me very little time. Still, considering the huge eye relief,  if the Morpheus had taller eyecups, pliable as they are, I think the eyepiece would be better. 

The kidney bean effect.

So considering how you describe the blackouts and my own experience, I gather they are not kidney bean shadows. Kidney bean shadows are the result of spherical aberration of the exit pupil (SAEP). The first Naglers, particularly the longer focal lengths, were very prone to it. With kidney beaning, the beams that leave the eye lens are well formed and they leave it at the correct angles, but they do not pass through a well-defined exit pupil. The result is a sharp image with everything in the right place, but there is a sensitivity to losing part of the image when your eye moves. In the animation below you can observe this. Some eye positions block the red beams.

Note that, compared to blackouts, only small eye movements are needed to cause kidney beaning (larger movements would again cause blackouts). The effect causes distracting bean shaped shadows, like so (the brain inverts the image on the retina):

Again, congratulations on the Morpheus. It may take a little gatting used to, but it is a magnificent eyepiece with a very generous afov. However, maybe, like me, you'd like to drop Baader a line or two about the eyecups. They are soft to the skin and nice and pliable, but a little too short. Had they been longer, eye placement would have been more intuitive. It would also be nice if the eyecups didn't come off so easily when you pop them up.