Sky and Telescope's Hot Astronomy Product for 2008!
The Baader Planetarium Hyperion 68° Modular Eyepieces offer world-class performance and unique photo-visual features, at an unheard of price. No longer do amateurs need to spend more on their eyepieces than their primary instrument, in order to get true high-end performance in a wide-field eyepiece. Not just a different branded version of their highly regarded cousins, the Hyperions have been totally redesigned to deliver better transmission, contrast, and useful new features.
Baader Planetarium has worked hard to give the Hyperions the world's finest optical coatings, superb mechanics, and their unique multifunctional design.
The 24mm has a fixed focal length
Some highlights of the Hyperion;
•Consisting of 8 elements in 5 groups (3.5mm - 21mm), the Hyperion optical design delivers outstanding sharpness and color correction over a 68° wide apparent field (65° for the 21mm). The Hyperion optical design has been chosen to deliver a exceptionally comfortable view, thanks to its 20mm of eye-relief, large eyelens, and a pupil free of the kidney-beaning and blackouts common in many wide field eyepieces.
•The new 24mm uses a different optical design and delivers the same outstanding performance over it's 68° wide apparent field. It is totally free of blackouts and other annoying exit pupil behaviors, delivers long eye relief (17mm), virtually zero distortion, and is sharp to the edge even in fast telescopes. Its flat focal plane is particularly suited to very fast newtonians that use coma correctors. The 29mm field stop makes the 24mm Hyperion the widest 24mm eyepiece we know of. The 24mm Hyperion is also the smallest and lightest of the Hyperions.
•High grade water-white glasses are used throughout, to deliver a crystal clear view with low scatter and excellent color fidelity, free of the yellow or bluish coloration imparted by many other eyepieces. Use of high-index glasses delivers low distortion and astigmatism, even on scopes as fast as f/4.
•Baader Planetarium has gone to great lengths to give the Hyperions the most advanced multicoatings ever used on amateur telescope eyepieces (please note: these are not the same coatings other manufacturers use on their similar clones of these eyepieces..). The Hyperion Phantom Group™ multi-coatings and coating equipment are proprietary to Baader and have been designed by German coating engineers specifically for the Baader Hyperions, and optimized for each of the glasses used. These coatings are applied with the latest thin-film German coating equipment, training, and process controls. The result are coatings that truly rival the best in the world - including the famous Zeiss Abbe Orthoscopic! The difference is clearly visible - users report that the Hyperions clearly show fainter stars and darker sky than the competitive clones.
•The proprietary Hyperion housings have been engineered by Baader to incorporate careful opto-mechanical design and execution of internal baffling to eliminate stray light and ghost reflections. Uncapping the eyelens reveals a pitch black interior, with no distracting and contrast-robbing glints of light from unbaffled lens or metal surfaces. We call these our 'black hole' eyepieces.
•Superb fit and finish. Eyepiece barrels are accurate to size, nicely machined, and hard anodized.
•Works in both 1.25" and 2" focusers. The 1.25" barrel is threaded for filters and kept short (0.94") to work well in binoviewers and spotting scopes. Baader's new housing incorporates a full-length 2" barrel (0.94" long) and provides a specially designed tapered locking recess. In addition, the Hyperion field stop locations have been re-designed and optimized to give the shortest focus position possible (important for binoviewer use).
•Soft folding rubber eyecups work for both normal and eyeglass users. Each Hyperion comes with protective lens caps and leatherette storage pouch.
•All Hyperions Accept popular Astigmatism Correcting Lenses (not available from Alpine Astronomical). The Hyperion eyelens housing is compatible with the full range of correcting lenses from ¼ to 3½ Diopters. Observers with any astigmatism will really appreciate this feature, no longer needing to wear eyeglasses to see stars as true pinpoints. The long 20mm eye relief of the Hyperions works particularly well with these corrector lenses, without forcing the observer to press their eye close to the lens in order to see the entire wide field.
•Removable Negative Lens Element permits variable focal lengths using Baader's Finetuning Rings (see section below). NOTE: The 24mm Hyperion is a different optical design and does not permit the use of Finetuning Rings to decrease focal length.
•Great for Binoviewing! We've tried most of the wide field eyepieces on the market that are suitable for binoviewing, and the Hyperions are at the top with the very best. When compared to some wide field eyepieces developed especially for binoviewing, we found the Hyperions were superior in every aspect: more comfortable view with better eye relief, smaller housing diameter at the eyelens gives more nose-room, better coatings (=better contrast), wider field, and half the cost.. Our favorite wide field bino eyepieces are the 8/13/17/21/24mm Hyperion. The new 24mm Hyperion works superbly in binoviewers, and delivers the widest true field of any 24mm wide field eyepiece. Some users with narrow interocular separation (like us) may find it is necessary to remove the thin rubber M54 protective ring, in order to increase the 'nose clearance'.
