Newbie Astronomer

Welcome Gary,

I had many fustrating nights with finderscopes....... not calibrating them to the main scope...... thats easy, the problem is they show everything upside down and back to front. This doesn't matter once you are viewing an object , but can be a real pain when you are trying to find somthing. The best thing I ever did was bin them........... you don't need them anyway. I currently use a 12" Dob and can easly find my way around the sky without these strange devices.

My advice is to remove the finderscope from bracket, leave the bracket attached to the telescope and fix up some type of crosshairs to the now hollow bracket. eg get three longer screws paint the ends of them with fluressent paint & screw them back in the bracket, or try putting a toilet roll core in bracket with string crosshair to show center.

All you are aiming to do is to have some way of getting your scope pointed at an area of the sky you can see with the the naked eye.

Happy hunting, Damon

I currently use a 12" Dob and can easly find my way around the sky without these strange devices.

Replaced my finder with a red dot finder a couple of years ago. Just point to the right bit of sky then use a low power eyepiece. Now if I could just remember to turn the thing off and stop wasting the batteries!

Ill try match the finder scope up first anyway, it will be a good exercise and see how I get on, I was able to find objects with the finder, just couldn't figure out why they wouldn't show up in the main scope.
if all fails I’ll use your Blue Peter suggestion with the toilet roll holder (ill have to make sure I get a responsible person to use the scissors though :lol: )

Thanks Perseus!
Gary

Hi Git (love that name)
Welcome to the Madhouse.
All I can say about finderscopes is your not a true amateur astronomer
until you have a black eye from one sliding thru the hoops and bonking you one.

Just as a side note,
Whats your 'hit list' of targets to see with the scope?

Welcome Git,
I guarantee you will regret picking that alias before the year's out with all the slagability potential :lol: :lol:
My first scope was something similar to yours, to be honest when it comes to many deepsky objects, its not a matter of seeing them, its a matter of detecting them at all, so what objects are you interested in ?

The name GIT has kinda stuck with me through the years so i've heard it all at this stage

Anyways, to be honest im not really sure what my "Hit List" should be, I was hoping you guys might tell me what i should look for with the spec of scope i have?

Cheers
Gary