Morpheus 1st Lite

[WilliamPaolini]

Just tried the Morpheus. Used my f/8 TSA-102 and the 14mm Morpheus and 14 XW. Not a lot of targets and the Moon is washing out everything. But visited M57, M29, M39, Albireo.

In the TSA stars were nice and pinpoint to the edge. XW of course showed some field curvature which that one is famous for. Background was very nicely dark and uniform. Right near the field stop brighter stars showed a little lateral color, and if you examined for astigmatism by racking the star out of focus you could see from the test that there was a very small amount, but so slight that it did not show when the star was in focus. So an in focus star at the field stop showed just as small of a point as it did in the XW when I focused it at the edge. Both eyepieces showed faint stars as well and M57 as well. FOV was obviously larger than the XW but it did not give an impression as greatly larger. Exit pupil was well behaved with no blackouts or kidney bean, and just a little more sensitive than the XW to lateral movements. Overall very comfortable to use. Eye relief felt slightly tighter. With the rubber eyeguard up my eye brow was just touching it. I preferred having it down. Was easy to see the entire FOV and still be comfortably far from the eyepiece, so quite nice compared to 82 degree EPs which for me are a bit of an effort to see the entire AFOV.

As days progress will test further and in other scopes, particularly the faster Dob. But off the top really liked it. Have to say this year seems like lots of top quality EPs are coming out. Overall liked it a little better than my XW because the off-axis was better than the 14 XW's and everything else was close or on-par. Will try to catch Saturn tomorrow night with some of the shorter focal lengths.

[WilliamPaolini]

And another test this evening...

With my f/4.7 XT10 and adjustable top Paracorr-I set at the #2 position (second line from full down), stars were sharp right across the FOV. Just the slight lateral color near the far off-axis, which is typical for all wide fields (I don't think I have found a wide field yet that doesn't have it). So in the 14mm and 12.5mm, the lateral color on a star point started to show at about the 20% from field stop, and for the rest of the shorter focal lengths at about 10% from the field stop. And of course only on brighter stars, and not obtrusive. So all-in-all really beautiful FOV. M13 was spectacular in all the focal lengths and all the stars in the glob stayed just as visible across the core whether it was dead center in the FOV or when M13 was positioned so it was bisected by the field stop. Nice little star points everywhere. And btw, field stop sharp on all of them (14, 12.5, 9, 6.5, 4.5).

[MortonH]

Starting to sound quite positive