Do I Really Need Both?

[Mav359]

I am just about to buy a illuminated reticle so I can properly align my scope using drift alignment.

In my head I planned to buy an illuminated reticle and a polar finder scope but now I'm thinking if I even need the polar finder scope at all as I'll be correcting my polar alignment as I go.

Would you guys buy both???

[brantuk]

I use a polar scope and an "illuminating device" that can be gotten from RVO (see link). I do have an illuminated reticule eye piece too but that's purely coincidental.

Astronomy Shed LED Polarscope Illuminator | Telescope Accessories | Rother Valley Optics

[Ad Astra]

Rather than an illuminated EP, I just use the highest power EP I have, sometimes with a barlow to reduce the field even more. When you reduce the field like this, drift is very apparent in just a few seconds - even without a reticle.

Dan

[MartinB]

If your polar scope is accurate enough to make drift aligning redundant then you don't need an illuminated reticle (although you might want to borrow one to check how accurate your polar scope is by doing a drift align to confirm). If your polar scope gets you in the vicinity but you still need to drift align then having the polar scope is of debateable value. With a little practice you learn how much correction your mount needs to correct a given speed of drift so you can start off with just a rough eyeball alignment and drift from that.