Baader Hyperion Universal Zoom Mark IV, 8-24mm eyepiece.

[Nojus]

Hi guys,another question about eyepiece,this is a planetary one,can you please judge this for cassegrain? That's narow FOV eyepiece,I know,but how about view quality,sharpness? 

Baader Hyperion Universal Zoom Mark IV, 8-24mm eyepiece.

 

 

[John]

Pretty good eyepiece. As good as the fixed focal length Hyperions, a bit better in terms of edge sharpness. I find the field of view at 24mm rather too narrow and not sharply defined at the edge so tended to use the ones I've owned as 20mm-8mm zooms. The actual apparent field of view has been independantly measured from 42 degrees at 24mm to 68 degrees at 8mm. The Mk IV has the same optics as the MK III but is slightly smaller and lighter.

I had good planetary views from the ones that I've used and that was with an F/5.3 dobsonian which is harder on eyepieces than a mak-cassegrain will be.

Generally considered the best of the mid-priced 8-24 zooms.

 

Edited November 12, 2017 by John

[Nojus]

1 minute ago, John said:

Generally considered one of the best of the mid-priced 8-24 zooms.

 

Thank you very much,that will be in my plans I guess,thanks your advise..

[John]

For your 180mm Mak-cassegrain the zoom plus one longer focal length eyepiece might well be all you need

[Nojus]

Just now, John said:

For your 180mm Mak-cassegrain the zoom plus one longer focal length eyepiece might well be all you need

I'll keep that in my mind,step by step I'll complete that set..

[Dave In Vermont]

I have one and use it often in my 150mm SW Maksutov. Does an excellent job!

Go ahead and 'pull-the-trigger.' The only issue is the same as all Zoom EP's of the 8mm - 24mm range, after about 20mm the F.O.V. drops-off rather dramatically. Some find this a problem. So just be aware - that is the 'nature-of-the-beast' and not to be an unexpected occurance.

Have fun,

Dave

[Nojus]

59 minutes ago, Dave In Vermont said:

 The only issue is the same as all Zoom EP's of the 8mm - 24mm range, after about 20mm the F.O.V. drops-off rather dramatically.

Dave

That's sounds not to good..:)

[F15Rules]

1 hour ago, Nojus said:

That's sounds not to good..:)

It's just a feature of the design..unlike fixed eyepieces, where the true field of view becomes narrower as you use a higher power (ie you close in on your target), the opposite is the case with zoom eyepieces..so, it seems at first somewhat strange that, as you reduce the magnification with a zoom, you also reduce the field of view.

Most of us nowadays are used to using eyepieces of at least 50 degrees field of view, very often more, so it can be difficult to accept a field of much less than 50 degrees. But, as John says above, the Baader Zoom has been shown to achieve 48degrees at the 24mm setting, which is not at all bad. 

However, you are likely to want to get the widest field you can at low power, for objects like star clusters and nebulae, hence John's advice that a good fixed length 24mm eyepiece will deliver those low power, wide views to supplement the very versatile Baader Zoom..the best of both worlds!

In your Mak, the Explore Scientific 24mm 68 degree eyepiece will be superb and give you just about the widest field you can get in a 1.25" format eyepiece..

Good luck☺.

Dave

[Nojus]

Just came back to this question,I can't believe I don't have this piece till now,in meantime have bought a lot of  other eyepieces,but now after bought Coronado Solarmax III for sun view,I need to get Baader 8-24mm ,and that's for sure,our star not required wide FOV ,so I think it will be exactly what I need,just for quick grab'n'go , thanks again for advise guys...

[Paul73]

This is a cracking eyepiece for the sun. I had both the MkIII and the MkIV. One for the white light scope and one for the Ha scope. ?

They also got used for the travel setup.

Paul

[R26 oldtimer]

Another go for it, from me too!

[John]

I think I've owned 3 of the Baader 8-24 zooms over the years - a Mk II and a couple of Mk III's. They are nice - maybe it's time to try a Mk IV ?

[Nojus]

19 minutes ago, John said:

I think I've owned 3 of the Baader 8-24 zooms over the years - a Mk II and a couple of Mk III's. They are nice - maybe it's time to try a Mk IV ?

that's for sure,I've read that there is some improvements on click/turn,I've ordered already from FLO,will report experienced..

[Owmuchonomy]

I owned a MkIII but in my case I struggled with the poor eye relief and although it’s a very specific circumstance it wouldn’t work at all in my Lunt 50 Ha scope; I ran out of in focus when trying to use that zoom. The Lunt 7 to 21.5 works fine.

[John]

The Baader zoom fell out of favour a little with me when I compared the views of some deep sky objects (eg: m81 and M82, M97 etc, etc) with an excellent fixed focal length equivilent and found the latter gave noticably brighter images. The zoom did very nicely on bright targets such as the Moon, planets etc but seemed to lack a little light transmission compared with the fixed focal lengths that I was comparing it with (themselves multi-element ultra widefields). Once I'd noticed the DSO differences I was put off a bit I have to admit

This was a Mk III zoom though so perhaps the Mk IV has overcome this ?

[Paul73]

10 minutes ago, John said:

This was a Mk III zoom though so perhaps the Mk IV has overcome this ?

To my eye, the views were identical. Ergonomically I preferred the heavier MK3.

Paul

[John]

48 minutes ago, Paul73 said:

To my eye, the views were identical. Ergonomically I preferred the heavier MK3.

Paul

I particulaly noticed the difference when picking up the supernova in M82 a couple of years back. At the 8mm zoom setting (199x with the dob) the galaxy looked very good with the dark rifts showing and the SN shining clearly but when I put the 8mm Ethos in the galaxy looked notably better all round, brighter and with more contrast. Not really a fair comparison but I was a little suprised to see this. M51 was another target that showed these differences.

I'm not down on the Baader Zoom particularly though - I may well get another sometime for travel / outreach. It's a very good all round eyepiece.

[bingevader]

1 hour ago, John said:

Not really a fair comparison 

1 hour ago, John said:

I'm not down on the Baader Zoom particularly though - I may well get another sometime for travel / outreach. It's a very good all round eyepiece.

Now there's a good idea. I did struggle at school and I'm not really prepared to fork out for another set just for that. A reasonably priced zoom might be a good alternative. Thanks John.

[Louis D]

5 hours ago, Owmuchonomy said:

I owned a MkIII but in my case I struggled with the poor eye relief

Did you try it with no eye cup attached?  That how I use my Celestron Regal zoom, with the twist-up eyecup screwed all the way off.  I get around 16mm of usable eye relief that way, which is enough for me to use with eyeglasses.

5 hours ago, Owmuchonomy said:

it’s a very specific circumstance it wouldn’t work at all in my Lunt 50 Ha scope; I ran out of in focus when trying to use that zoom.

Try the Celestron Regal zoom (Olivon has a similar one with rubber grip).  It is designed to work in spotting scopes with limited in-travel for focus.  It's so spotting scope specific that there are no filter threads and the lower optical group travels right to the lower edge of the insertion barrel which is itself shorter than typical.  They come up used or parted out by spotting scope owners on ebay sometimes.  If you were in the US, you could pick up a blem Olivon version from MASILMW on CN classifieds for $65.

[Nojus]

8 hours ago, John said:

The Baader zoom fell out of favour a little with me when I compared the views of some deep sky objects (eg: m81 and M82, M97 etc, etc) with an excellent fixed focal length equivilent and found the latter gave noticably brighter images. The zoom did very nicely on bright targets such as the Moon, planets etc but seemed to lack a little light transmission compared with the fixed focal lengths that I was comparing it with (themselves multi-element ultra widefields). Once I'd noticed the DSO differences I was put off a bit I have to admit 

This was a Mk III zoom though so perhaps the Mk IV has overcome this ?

Well,planning to use it for Moon,Sun and planets.I think should be OK..

[steveex2003]

Non-expert opinion. I have two of these (MK IV's), and use them regularly with 80 and 120 Fracs, a Mak 127 and a 10" Dob. I tend to use one with the Barlow permanently attached and one without. I find them very good in all of my scopes, particularly for quick sessions with the 80 and the Mak. I also have a wide angle Aero 30mm, so a decent range is covered.
Previously i was using Orion Sirus Plossls which i understand to be reasonable and utilitarian. I much prefer the view through the Zooms, and the zoom function itself greatly assists my often comical amateurishness.
I would like to compare to something super high-end like Naglers for the experience, and perhaps for something to aspire to. Right now i am having plenty of fun with the stuff I feel privileged to own, and the sheer gulf of experience I clearly lack when reading this (which is a lot) and other pages.
You can occasionally pick up a MK IV (as I did my second) for £100 or so secondhand and for whatever its worth I think that's tremendous value for money.

Steven

Edited March 28, 2019 by steveex2003

[SpaceWalker]

If anybody interested. Ernest has bench tested Mark III and found it is 1) poorly corrected off-axis at all settings; 2) shrinks FOV pretty fast, e.g. from 72* at 8mm to plossl-like 52* at 16mm and  just to ortho-like 44* at 24mm, so it's useful mostly within 8-12mm. And I also *suspect* ? it may have EOFB (Edge of Field Brightening) like other zooms, even expensive ones (e.g. Leica).

IMO, like any other, even cheaper zooms, it's good for 1)planetary observations since allows to select optimal magnification within seconds instead of wasting time for pulling back and force separate EPs; 2) as noted above, good for solar observations; 3) very useful for fast dialing up optimal magnification for faint fuzzies; 4) overall good grab-n-go eyepiece. But IMO, it's not a serious competitor for mid-range (e.g. ES68/82/100) or premium (e.g. Pentax, Nikon, TV) eyepieces for DSO observations especially in faster  scopes, what actually John has reported above. To each its own. ?  But I agree, overall good addition to one's EP collection, nice to have it in your EP case.

 

[Louis D]

15 hours ago, SpaceWalker said:

it's good for 1)planetary observations since allows to select optimal magnification within seconds instead of wasting time for pulling back and force separate EPs; 2) as noted above, good for solar observations; 3) very useful for fast dialing up optimal magnification for faint fuzzies; 4) overall good grab-n-go eyepiece.

5) great for binoviewer usage even if you have a power-switch/slide.  Swapping two eyepieces and making sure both are square to the eyepiece holder takes way longer than during monoviewing.  I basically use either the 23mm Vite/Svbony 62 Aspherics for max field or the Celestron Regal zooms for general observing when binoviewing.  To bring this back on topic, the BHZ is not all that binoviewer friendly because the top rotates during zooming for all versions, making the use of batwing eyeguards majorly inconvenient.  The CRZ top does not rotate, so it is much better in this regard.

[Louis D]

16 hours ago, SpaceWalker said:

Ernest has bench tested Mark III

Ernest notes dirt on a lens near the focal plane being visible from 20mm to 24mm, which is confirmed by user Olala further down in photos.  I can't say the Celestron doesn't suffer from this same issue, but I've never seen it during lunar or solar observing with either of mine (one Celestron, one Olivon zoom, same optics/mechanics).  Maybe I'll have to repeat my cell phone camera FOV tests with the CRZ.

The CRZ weighs less than the BHZ at 314g natively or 279g with the eyecup removed for eyeglass usage.  This compares to 342g for the BHZ with 1.25" adapter.

Comparing my measured field stop numbers to Ernest's BHZ numbers, the CRZ is very close to the BHZ:

            8mm       12mm      16mm    20mm    24mm

CRZ:    8.9mm    11.7mm    14mm    16mm   17.2mm

BHZ:   10mm      11.3mm    14.5mm 17mm   17mm

In fact, the CRZ FOV decreases linearly unlike the BHZ which remains constant between 20mm and 24mm and also rapidly widens below 12mm.  The CRZ field stop is sharpest mid-range around 16mm.  I'm guessing it would need a moving field stop to maintain sharpness throughout the range, so the midpoint was chosen as a compromise.  Ernest doesn't mention how sharp the BHZ field stop is at various focal lengths that I could find for comparison.

I'll have to check for field curvature center to edge.  My recollection is that it is slight.  Ernest reports quite a bit of FC for the BHZ at the longer focal lengths.  If anything, that's where the CRZ is flattest.

As for parfocality, I know the CRZ requires only 1mm to 2mm of refocusing from 8mm to 24mm, so it's similar to the BHZ.  One huge advantage to the CRZ is that the zoom movement is very smooth and light compared to the BHZ which is quite a bit stiffer from my star party recollections.  This is important on lightly damped alt-az mounts and binoviewers to avoid having to man-handle two zooms while keeping the scope on target.  The lack of focal length detents has never bothered me.  I've always been able to zero-out the focal length differences without much effort in binoviewers just by eyeballing it.  Your brain alerts you when the two images exactly match.

As far as edge sharpness, the CRZ doesn't seem any worse than Ernest's BHZ numbers, though I don't have an optical test bench to confirm this.  In particular, at 24mm, it seems sharp across most of the narrow field of view, unlike the BHZ which has a 64 arc-minute spot size, which is Erfle awful.  Admittedly, I'm comparing f/6 results to f/4 results.

It's too bad the CRZ is so difficult to locate having been discontinued.  For us in the states, MASILMW on CN classifieds sells Olivon blems for $65 shipped to the CONUS (that's continental/contiguous US).  Given the slight differences with the BHZ at $289, that seems like a total bargain.  If the BHZ was around $130, I might try one for comparison sake.  As it is, it seems massively overpriced relative to the CRZ/OZ.

[Ags]

I came across this old thread while reading up on the Baader Mk IV Zoom. Aside from Ernst's somewhat critical review, perhaps I should add this counterpoint:

https://astronomyconnect.com/forums/articles/the-baader-hyperion-mark-iv-zoom-eyepiece-a-performance-review-with-monoviewing-and-binoviewing.66/

 

Edited June 7, 2019 by Ags