Cant align my finderscope?!!

[Spanishfly]

The advantage of a finder over a telrad is mainly that the telrad only lets you use naked eye stars,

And in my heavily light-polluted skies naked eye stars are few and far between.

[Hythlodaeus]

Had this problem last night, pulled my scope out the cupboard after a couple months of neglect and being a decently clear night was hoping to see Jupiter for the first time, failing that moon was nice and bright.

Im still new to using scopes, and finding things in the night sky but fancied my chances of finding Jupiter as its basically right next to the moon this month.

I found Jupiter easilly enough but it was a bit off a pain keeping it in view when I'd go in for coffee after loosing the feeling in my fingers, when it was centered in my finderscope it wasnt anywhere to be seen through the eyepiece. Being new to all this i thought it was maybe a collimation problem , but after a little thought i now realise its the srews on the finderscope not being set up right.

Ive fixed this though, thanks to the chimey pot a few house away, i just centered it in the eyepiece then again in the finder scope, holding it in place with one hand and adjusting the screws accordingly. Tonight looks clear again, so I'll give it another go later on.

[bingevader]

It was the shoe for me, first time I had the 'scope out.

I'd spent ages during the day aligning the blessed thing and it was way off.

In the end I put something big(ish) in the centre of the scope and then holding onto the finder twisted the whole thing until the object was close to centre and then made the fine adjustments.

I now know where the finder scope needs to sit in the shoe, but it didn't seem square to me!

Cheers

[Brian Nordstrom]

Just to be pedantic: it should be duck tape, not duct tape: the word comes from "cotton duck" from "katoen doek" which means cotton cloth or fabric (referring to the textile which give the tape its strength).

Hmmm notthern hemisphere lingui ? , we down south call it DUCT tape ,, as it repairs holes in ducts easlly ,,, ha ha ha .

Brian

[ronin]

Cheap course alignment tool for finderscope and collimation:

C+A Tool: