A quick test on the Hyperion

Not a lot of observing done last night, although I was tempted to not go to my class as the sky looked so clear. Are well, hope it's clear again tonight. I got outside early on with the youngest to try and see a couple of satellites, but in both cases we missed them. I suspect that as the sky was still pretty light, the satellites just weren't bright enough. I then managed to miss Iridium 55 flaring as well. Was stuck inside at just the wrong moment. Blast. I took a couple of test shots with the Z2 in raw mode, but haven't had a chance to download them yet. I've also found a setting buried deep in the camera menus to turn off noise reduction in the camera. This makes saving the captured image significantly faster. It's gonna be interesting to see how they come out.

After my class, I got outside for about ten minutes to do a quick comparison between the 5mm Ortho and the 5mm Hyperion. I used the barlow to take the magnification in both cases to 160x trying to push each ep. I found that focusing the Ortho was more challenging than the Hyperion at this magnification. I'm not sure why, I guess the extra lens structures in the Hyperion make it less sensitive to variations in the light cone from the Objective lens. I picked Saturn as the target of my little test. Once focussed, I was able to see the rings, the gap between the rings and the planet and at least one moon in the Ortho. In the Hyperion, I was able to see all this and another moon further out. Saturn shot through the FOV of the Ortho in a very short time whereas it took a lot longer to travel through the Hyperion FOV, approximately twice as long, which made observing Saturn significantly easier and the feeling of being rushed was no longer there. The longer eye relief and the larger exit pupil, just make the Hyperion much easier on the eye to use. I'm really glad I have this second Hyperion.