telerad,minor miracle or ?

[rory]

ive spent my first 10 months or so in this hobby without a finder either.i have researched options over the months and the telrad and rigel systems look good options. i just wish the rigel had that third circle.

but whichever i buy in the new year ,i expect it to be far better than the method i use at the moment( lots and lots of to and froing searching) .

so if you are like me and have no finder, any would be better than none at all.

[RikM]

I have a couple of Rigels and I don't miss the extra circle. I am sure it would be useful, but the little box of magic works fine without it. Quite simply the best accessory I ever bought. I was well and truly frustrated for the first few months of owning a scope. ( I tried the swearing method but it wasn't so effective for me. Perhaps my vocabulary isn't up to coping with my light pollution?) Then I got this little Christmas cracker toy and I could tell which star I was pointing at . I use it together with a 9x50 RACI finder to fine tune the position and have seen loads of stuff since.

[cabby]

having only been observing for a couple of months and getting used to my equipment has been fun at times!

The red dot finder which is permanently fixed to my scope is next to useless and no matter what I called it I couldn't get it to work.

I have just bought myself a Telrad for my xmas present and sneeked a use of it a couple of nights ago. All I can say is what a joy it was to use, took less than a minute to set up and align and it gave me the best observing I have done to date. No more frustration hunting constantly for what I was trying to find, most of the time it was in the eyepiece FOV. The only downer was the dew on the glass but with a home made shield and a trip to Maplins later for a couple of resistors to make a dew preventer. Here's the link to make one http://stargazerslounge.com/diy-astronomer/165353-homemade-dew-preventer-telrad-eyepieces.html

[hes not well again]

I might have to save my pennies and buy boy a telerad and a finder. I quite like the idea of a good quality 9x50 that I can demount and use as a grab and go. A bit more hassle but maybe cheaper in the end. Although as a telerad is essentially some circles in the sky with no magnification I might experiment with some sort of gun sight arrangement ie a cirle with cross hairs at the front and a back sight, maybe painted white so I can see it. At this stage anything will be an improvement.

[derekbcox]

telrads forever

[Demonperformer]

MY rdf caused me no end of trouble. If I was at a dark site it was great. But most of my observing takes place in my front garden with no less than seven streetlights keeping me company, and in that sort of lighting, I found I could never see the red dot, which rather defeated the object of the exercise. Eventually sold it and replaced it with a wixey and a copy of CdC. Transformed the whole experience of scope-alignment from a long period of aggravation to less than a minute of simplicity itself.