Saturday evening at the River Ridge Observatory, I shot the Jellyfish Nebula with my C11 @ f/1.9 with a ZWO ASI2600MC Pro and L-Extreme F2 dual narrowband filter.
From Wikipedia: IC 443 (also known as the Jellyfish Nebula and Sharpless 248 (Sh2-248)) is a galactic supernova remnant (SNR) in the constellation Gemini. On the plane of the sky, it is located near the star Eta Geminorum. Its distance is roughly 5,000 light years from Earth.
Another Friday night at the River Ridge Observatory. This time above freezing, at least for a while. I had my C11 with Hyperstar and Samyang 135mm aimed at overlapping targets. The Samyang centered on the star 13 Monoceros so that it could get targets from the Rosette Nebula on one side and the Cone and Dreyer’s Nebulae on the other. Meanwhile, the C11 was zoomed in on the Christmas Tree cluster area which includes the previously mentioned Cone and Fox Fur Nebulae.
First, the image from the Samyang and an ASI2600MC Pro with an Antlia Triband RGB Ultra filter. The Antlia is a triple narrowband, or maybe dual narrowband plus blue if you prefer. On the right hand side is the Rosette Nebula. I shot this a few weeks ago with a smaller format camera. Dreyer’s Nebula is the small blue patch in the upper left while the Fox Fur and Cone Nebulae are in the lower left. The field of view with this camera is about 10×6.6 degrees. This was made from 47 3-minute subs.
This close up of the Christmas Tree star cluster area was shot with my C11 with Hyperstar and an L-Extreme F2 dual band filter. No plus blue with this one. In the lower right is the Cone Nebula pointed toward some stars that make up the Christmas Tree Cluster. In the middle is the Fox Fur Nebula and some dark lanes while above that is a dark nebula whose name I don’t know. This was made from 90 1-minute subs. I tried for many more than that but the winds picked up and ruined many of my frames.
I finished around midnight when 10-15 MPH gusts made things difficult.
SVBONY asked me to review this 60mm white light telescope. Given its low price of about $75, I wasn’t expecting much. I’m glad to say that I was pleasantly surprised.
In the unboxing, I found a lightly padded backpack, a tripod, the 60mm refractor, 1.25” diagonal, 20mm eyepiece of unknown design, and instruction manual.
The tripod is light duty, but the telescope is lightweight. Given that my testing was in a 10 MPH wind, the tripod performed better than I expected. Still, a better tripod is recommended and the scope comes with a short Vixen dovetail to enable mounting on a telescope mount.
The telescope has a standard pinhole solar finder already mounted. With a focal length of 400mm, the 20mm eyepiece provides 20x magnification. That makes the Sun easier to find. Until you find it, all you will see is black of course. Once found, you might want to swap to a higher magnification. A 14mm eyepiece would probably be just right. That said, the image I saw was crisp and clear. I could easily see five sunspot groups with the provided eyepiece.
The picture of the Sun here was taken with the same cellphone as the other pictures and I have never been good at cellphone-eyepiece photography. Still, it turned out to be acceptable.
This telescope is intended for people new to solar observing and I think this telescope does a good job at that without breaking the bank.
