Altair Astro 10x60 finderscope

[ronb]

Unable to get a good balance with an Equinox 80 and C11 mounted side by side and unable to piggy back because of the observatory roof I decided to look for a light weight guidescope which would mount directly on the C11 and eventually settled on the AA 10x60 finder and their guidescope focuser.

I have not yet had chance to use it for guiding and have only had two available nights to use as a finder alongside the rdf I normally use.

As mentioned by others it is well made and as is to be expected gives clear brighter viewing than the 9x50 finder supplied by Orion Optics a few years ago with their Europa 200 (same as the Skywatcher?). Considerable CA was present on Saturn but minimal or no problem with stars.

I won't go into how the scope is focused or aligned as this has been adequately covered here in other posts other than to say I find the slightest touch to either eyepiece or illuminator can knock it slightly out of focus.

As an inveterate tamperer the first thing I did was to find how to change the battery in the illuminator. It took 3 attempts. First I unscrewed the knurled end which screws into the eyepiece. This only exposed the LED. Second attempt was to unscrew the switch end. This time I discovered the switch/brightness control - but it also showed that the wire from the battery to the switch had not been soldered onto the battery tag - soon rectified but a potential cause of problems. After some head scratching I found that the illuminator actually unscrews at the centre between the conical end with the switch and the cylindrical bit that screws into the eyepiece, the joint being so good that it wasn't immediately obvious that there actually is one. Again, as mentioned by others, some form of instruction sheet would have been helpful here.

Otherwise AA's description of the finder on their website appears totally accurate and it looks as though we are going to have a happy future together.

[mart rich]

Thanks for the review - but please update when you get round to using it as a finder guider. I have recently bought one as a finder and intend to upgrade to finder guider shortly, so will be very interested - hopefully I will be able to share some experience with this too.

All the best

Martin

[swag72]

I have been using this as a guider for about a year now - Works perfectly well. Gives me good guiding with a QHY5. I've managed a 1 hour sub with it!!

[ronb]

Martin, will do but could be a while before I get to try it for guiding - the wife has just nicked my laptop!!!