I finally had a good clear night last night, not too cold at just below freezing, and fairly dark at 20.7 SQM. The twin 17.5mm Morpheii have been locked and loaded on the TSA-102 waiting for thier first binolight so out I went. Would “Morpheii” be the plural of two Morpheus?? I will be posting a full review in the coming weeks with more critical assessments, but just wanted to give a preview of my first experience with them just observing.

I generally enjoy binoviewing for lunar and planetary, but not so much DSO, so was not expecting too much on this little jaunt. Orion is of course well placed so that was my focus with a little side tracking. I started with M42 and was of course completely blown away! The nebula was nice and detailed and at 46x (no OCA) the large AFOV allowed the entire Sword to be in the FOV. Contrast appeared superb and star points all perfect. Eye relief was very comfortable and with the eye guards folded down viewing was a bit of a stand off from the eyepieces which was nice. With the rubber eye cups in the up position my head position was just lightly touching them and most all of the extraneous light was blocked.

Something I found really nice when binoviewing with these was the long eye relief and not overly wide AFOV let me roll my eyes around to view the off-axis without any feeling of having to dip in closer to the eyepiece. So I really like this realm between 70 and 82 degrees and am finding it has a lot of ergonomic advantages for my eye being more immersive than the 70 degree XWs but not so large as to not be able to see everything easily at a glance peripherally. It was also nice that the off-axis was nice and sharp so little doubles like Iota Ori near the bottom of the FOV when M42 was centered was nice and sharp. So was a real treat just scanning around with both eyes more naturally then I am used to not having to have my face pressed up against the equipment.

From that point on I just had too much fun! I was not doing any critical assessment yet but just giving them a test drive. The Trapezium was of course beautiful with its gleaming little stars – little is a bit of a misnomer I suppose since Trap-C is 40 solar masses and with a luminosity of over 200,000 times that of the Sun! Driving down to Iota I lingered there for a while observing that nice double. Then traveled up stopping at 42 Ori briefly then on to the cluster at the top of the Sword NGC 1981. I’ve always liked this little grouping of stars, but never tend to linger there long observing them. However, with such a comfortable binoview and a nice large patch of TFOV I ended up staying on NGC 1981 for quite some time. So much so that I ended up noticing some things about it that I never did before, like how just to one side of the main grouping of stars, there is a small gap then another clutch of a few stars. Was quite obvious in this view I was having and I never noted it before. Always nice observing a target in different ways as it brings things to one’s attention that are sometimes missed. Anyway, really enjoyed this little cluster for quite some time.

Next I drove the binoviewer on up to Orion’s Belt, enjoying the ring of stars that circle Anlinam, then moving right to Mintaka to observe that wide double, then all the way left to Alnitak where I was treated to the unexpected in seeing the Flame Nebula. I’ve never had a lot of success trying to see this with my smaller aperture scopes but there it was as plain as day through the binoviewed Morpheii. So wow…that was interesting! Then from there up briefly to M78 (nothing special for me), then back down to Sigma Ori. Oh my Sigma Ori is just such a pretty multiple system. I just can’t relay just how mesmerizing it was and how long I observed it. And again, then benefit of binoviewing, especially when there is long eye relief that allows a little stand off from the equipment, is zero fatigue and it is just so natural.

Anyway, after that I visited Betelgeuse and the nice little double HD 39758 just south of it, then up to NGC the “37” cluster, then over to Haydes to look at 77 and 78 Tau as I love the cool asterism that this pair and two other pairs make all together, sort of like a triangle where each vertex is a pair of nice bright stars. This to me looks more like a stargate in space! Then finally over to M45 filling the FOV very nicely in all their glory.

So a very enchanting first light with the Morpheus 17.5s in my TSA-102. I just might bolt them to the scope it was so much fun and natural exploring the sky with them with no eye fatigue and no need to press my face up to the equipment.