The Hyperion telescope will outperform telescopes costing much more. It provides the largest flat field of any Cassegrain telescope on the market.
COMPARISON
The spot diagrams below demonstrate the superior optical performance of the Hyperion telescope compared to other instruments in its class, including the more expensive Ritchey-Chrétien (RC) design.
The spot sizes shown here are for a flat field as a CCD is only capable of producing a flat field. The curved field that many manufacturers show only demonstrates the un-achievable, theoretical performance of those systems. Spots are shown for off-axis distances over a 43mm image circle, the diagonal size of a 35mm-format CCD. The Hyperion remains diffraction-limited not just over this area, but out to 35mm off-axis, covering a huge 70mm image circle. The spots sizes over a 70mm image circle with the Hyperion are equivalent to the spot sizes of an RC over just a 15mm image circle!
The diagram below shows the diffraction point-spread functions 25mm off-axis (50mm image circle) for both a Ritchey-Chrétien and the Hyperion.
