Help The Aged!

[ramstar]

Took my dobs 200 out for the first time last night - never having seriously looked through a scope other than those at the seaside looking out to the ocean. Before the cloudcover sent me indoors, my 60+ year old body (with what feels sometimes like 70 year old bones) was struggling to get itself in a comfortable position to look through the finderscope! Is there an easier way of trying to find your intended target?

[paul mc c]

A right angled finder would be great.

[dtr42]

right angled finder scope or a web cam mounted to dob connected to pc , also a box for the dob to sit on [about 18" -2 foot high saves the back from bending to low] and makes the viewing at high levels easier as well

[Matt Scunthorpe]

Welcome to SGL.

Matt

[Charon]

My 90 degree finder scope (Orion 9x50) is one of the best piece's of kit I have bought - well apart from the telescope that is.

[Capricorn]

Sorry to say that owning a dobsonian and bending over go together. Actually cannot think of a scope where you do not bend to some extent. Just some are worse then others.

[paul schofield]

A right angled finder will make a difference in comfort, it did with me. Also a height adjustable seat helps too. Bending with a Dob I think is pretty much par for the course. I spend more time moving my seat than I do at the eyepiece.

[BinocularSky]

Another 60+ "oldie" here . I have a knackered back (rugby, caving) and find bending literally a pain. My solution for the Dob has been a height-adjustable observing chair. Expensive for what they are, but cheap when I consider the massively improved observing comfort. I use a Telrad to get me into the right area of sky, and I have a right-angled finder for when I need to navigate non-naked-eye star fields. I need to lean to use the Telrad, but bending is now a thing of the past, unless I choose to do it.

The chair also goes low enough for the primary mirror collimation tweaks on Polaris at the beginning of a session.

[moogoomonkey]

How about a telrad with a mirror?

[LukeSkywatcher]

Observing from a seated position works great for 2 reasons:

1/ Hardly any bending

and

2/ It actually lets the muscles and blood vessels in your eyes relax which relieves the pressure and gives better vision.