WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 63telescope design. And the end product is
indeed handsome. The big question is:
How does it perform in the wild?
Under the sky
With a 330mm focal length, the telescope
is its own finder scope. I inserted a 24mm
eyepiece with a 68° apparent field of view
and enjoyed a magnification of 14x with
a true field of view of nearly 5° — that’s
10 Full Moons side by side. As you might
expect, this leads to some stunning
low-power views of the night sky. When
picking targets with a small-aperture, low-
power scope like this, there is no better
starting point than the Moon.
With a waxing gibbous Moon high in
the sky and a 3–6mm zoom eyepiece in the
focuser, images were sharp and contrasty
with little off-axis glare. The telescope had
a clear “snap to focus,” a trait indicative of
high-quality optics. The scope showed little
false color even at high magnifications and
handled magnification pretty well.
When touring the Moon, I noted on
various occasions that the image held up
quite well all the way to 110x (46x per
inch). In my book, this is a performance
consistent with a quality apochromatic
doublet. The star test revealed perfect col-
limation. The images on either side of
focus were exactly what I’d hoped to see.
The wide fields this instrument is capa-
ble of make for some stunning vistas.
Through my 24mm eyepiece, I could see
all of Collinder 70 (often called the Orion’s
Belt Cluster), and the same was true with
the entire Orion Nebula (M42) complex.
Open clusters were especially beautiful.
Their stars shone as gemstones against a
deep black background.
My favorite eyepiece with the scope was
one with a 13mm focal length that pro-
vided slightly more than a 3° true field and
offered a magnification of 25x. The combi-
nation of wide field, moderate power, and
great contrast really served to showcase just
how nice this little telescope is.
The SV60EDS also makes a wonderful
daytime spotting scope. Its size and capa-
bility make it an ideal little telescope to
leave set up in the front room of the house
for those quick peeks when Mother Nature
provides the opportunity.
Apart from my lavish praise, I have only
two notes to potential buyers. First, giventhe scope’s small size, it is a bit back-heavy.
Depending on your mount (in my case a
manual alt-azimuth one), you might want
to invest in a slightly longer dovetail plate
to allow you to slide the scope forward a bit
more and thus obtain a little better balance
to facilitate hand tracking.
My second point is for those who may
be looking into using this as an astrograph
(a wide-field imaging scope). I suggest the
optional photographic field f lattener,
Stellarvue’s SFF60 ($299).Big praise
All in all, I was quite impressed with the
SV60EDS. It’s a sharp little telescope —
both to look at and to look through. It’s
obvious that Stellarvue took much care
and paid attention to details in the design
and production of this model. If I were
looking for an apochromat in this size
range, this one would definitely find its
way onto the short list of contenders.Stellarvue SV60EDS
Ty p e: Apochromatic refractor
Focal length: 330 millimeters
Focal ratio: f/5.5
Length: 8.5 inches (216mm) (dew shield
retracted, focuser in)
Weight: 2.5 pounds (1.1 kilograms) (tube
only)
Included: Dual-speed 2" focuser, foam-
lined carrying case, clamshell-style ring
with attached Vixen-style rail
Price: $599
Contact: Stellarvue
11820 Kemper Road
Auburn, CA 95603
[t] 530.823.7796
[w] http://www.stellarvue.comPRODUCT INFORMATION
These images of Comet Lovejoy (C/2014 Q2) and the Rosette Nebula show what the SV60EDS can do when connected to a Canon 60Da. The comet image is a
two-panel mosaic, each a stack of ten 3-minute exposures at ISO 3200. The Rosette also is a stack of ten 3-minute exposures at ISO 3200. JON TALBOT
The front lens of the SV60EDS is a 2.4-inch f/5.5
doublet. The company manufactures one of the
lens elements from Ohara FPL–53 glass.
The one-piece aluminum clamshell ring has a
Vixen-style dovetail rail underneath and a shoe
for a finder scope.