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Baader Hyperion 21mm first light


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Auntie Flo was kind enough to lay down her knitting needles for long enough to sell me this pristine eyepiece from her ex-demo stock, and last night the rain gods finally moved on leaving a clear sky washed out by the moon. I bought the eyepiece to use on DSOs in the OMC 140. I've never used an SCT or fast Newtonian, and have always found this telescope more than adequate for DSOs - with the right eyepiece.

The Baader 21mm operates at 96X in the OMC140 and gave a magnificent view of M42 despite the bright moonlight. It was just possible to fit the whole nebula and a very faint Running Man in the field. The Crab Nebula also showed up surprisingly clearly.

I tested the eyepiece against two much simpler ones of similar focal length: a Televue Plossl 20mm and Circle T orthoscopic 18mm. The heavy (380gms) multi-element Baader eyepiece has more eye relief and a much wider field of view than either of the other two, but loses out to both on fine detail. The field is almost wide enough to capture the whole moon and the image is very bright. The TV Plossl image was slightly brighter and the ortho one notably less so, but the two smaller eyepieces beat the Hyperion on resolving detail. The ortho was ahead with the TV not far behind in resolving the craters on the floor of Fracastorius and in Theophilus. The Baader eyepiece was left quite a long way behind on complex detail such as the jumble of mountains and small craters in the southern wall of Theophilus. It barely managed either the Cassini division in Saturn's rings or Rigel's faint companion while the other two showed both clearly, with the ortho again slightly ahead.

As soon as there is a clear moonless sky I shall try it on more DSOs, where it clearly performs best. It's very well made and is said to be a Chinese clone of a Vixen Lanthanum Wide. I don't know if anyone can confirm this. Because of its performance on fine detail, I'd think twice about buying a Hyperion with a very short focal length.

Eye positioning was quite critical with a slight tendency to kidney bean. Like other complex eyepieces, it has its own brief cooling-down period. I pointed it at the moon straight from a warm room, and for about five minutes there were lurid blue and orange flashes in the field, but it son calmed down.

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Interesting. I took first light from my Baarder 21 last night and although I enjoyed the views, I wasn't blown away by them. I only had Revelation to compare them against (and a Meade 26 which I never use) and although marginally better, I expected more. Certainly agree with the need for cool down time. Found significant improvement after about 20 minutes.

My assumption is that this is as a result of the limitations of my ETX rather than the Baarder not being a much better eyepiece.

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1/ The built-in camera thread.....what on earth size thread did they use? Doesn't match any known or useful photographic thread.

I think you hit the nail on the head. Why use an M43 thread?! (The adaptor costs £6.50 but is currently unavailable...)

They are only minor quibbles and don't effect what the eyepiece is truly supposed to be.....a great 1.25" widefield eyepiece.

True :D

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