Mountain in my finderscope

[Tribal-Wolf]

Got the scope out last night before it was completely dark and pushed it around to find Venus in the finderscope. When I look through I see a furry looking mountain slightly out of focus. My first thought when looking at it if a spider on the objective lens so I carefully go to look and prepare to fight the beast, nothing is there. I get out the torch and look into the finder and see something actually inside the finder. On removing the front end of the finderscope and looking inside there was a piece of polystyrene about 6mm in in size stuck behind the cross hair. It had never been there before and nobody touches the scope but me so was obviously there from manufacture. Very odd that it had not been seen before so I think my scope is haunted by the ghost of a Chinese production line packer lol.

[pajr777]

Shortly after getting my 'scope I was tracking Jupiter as it set in the West using the RA slow-mo controls. Gradually a big smeary mess crept into the view in the eye-piece. I tried moving the focuser all the way in both directions, and even changed eye pieces, all to no avail, before the penny finally dropped and I realised I had tracked low enough that I was viewing Jupiter on the other side of some thin twigs on the lime tree at the bottom of the garden :)