Baader Planetarium Hyperion 24mm

3.0 24mm Hyperion

Comfortable, excellent overall optics (except for curvature), good planetary performance with Powermate.

Field curvature at f/5, dust visible in focal plane, poor thread blackening.

I got this eyepiece to compare with my 24mm Panoptic. My hope was that the 24mm Hyperion would offer a much cheaper alternative to the Panoptic for the max TFOV in a 1.25" format eyepiece. After some use, I found the results to be a bit mixed.

Upon receiving the eyepiece, I quickly noticed that the build quality was very good with the exception of the filter threads which were a bit poorly blackened. Viewing through the eyepiece during daytime, I noticed that I could see some small bits of dust which had accumulated on the field lens. Although the field lens is actually inside the eyepiece, it's easily accessible by unscrewing the lower assembly by hand. Using a simple hand blower, I quickly blew off the dust and everything was fine after that, although I would still need to re-clean it every once in a while after use in the field. It should be noted that I am near-sighted, so this issue of "dust in the focal plane" may not be a problem for everyone. And even so, it wasn't much of an issue during use at night.

With my f/5 12" Dob, I noticed significant field curvature in the outer 30%-35% of the field. Try as I might, I could not get a nice middle ground between the focusing in the outer field versus the inner field. Using a Paracorr seemed to help quite a bit. With the Paracorr, the field curvature was reduced to about the last 15% of the field, which wasn't too bad at all.

Overall, I was a bit disappointed with the eyepiece, but I didn't give up on it because I didn't see much wrong with the eyepiece beyond the field curvature issue. The contrast and sharpness at the center of the field seemed quite good and I saw only a little scatter and almost no lateral color. I had a 4X Powermate on order at the time and decided to keep the Hyperion a while longer. My hope was that it would make a nice planetary eyepiece for star parties when used with the Powermate.

It turns out that it was a very good idea. When used with the Powermate, the 24mm Hyperion gave great views of Saturn and Mars across almost the entire field of view. There was very little scatter, lateral color, or stretching of the planets at the edge of field. And the eye relief (listed at approximately 15mm) and comfort were top notch with good ease of use and no problems with blackouts.

Whether or not I can recommend this product is a tough question. I would say it's a definite "no" at f/5, but I would probably suggest people to try it out at f/6 and above.