Help! I'm pulling my hair out over this new setup.

[Rick King]

Hey everyone. I just got my celestron 8SE yesterday and I ran into some problems with my finder scope. I figured I would step up to something nicer than them toys they put on these scopes. I bought a celestron 9X50 R.A.C.I. finder scope. It just won't adjust w/o backing two of the screws almost totally out. I put the cheap scope back on it and could not get it to adjust far enough to line up. Wat am I doing wrong? I even put on some music by Foreigner and even that didn't help. 

[Peter Drew]

There is usually some clearance on the screws that hold the finder base to the main tube. If you slacken these, it should allow the finder bracket to be twisted further in the direction you need for alignment. If not, opening the holes yourself will have the same advantage.  

[Tommohawk]

Wild guess, but if you're setting up in daylight, is it possible you are using a target which is too close?

[Stargazer McCabe]

It's slightly difficult to discern, but it might be that the finderscope isn't seated in the holder correctly. To me, it looks as though the finderscope needs to move forwards fractionally in its mount.

The adjusting screws should touch the finderscope side in the little channel or gully circling the finderscope. To get mine seated correctly I had to jiggle the rubber ring at the front end and the third, spring loaded "screw" at the adjustment point. When I did this, the spring loaded "screw" seated in the gully and so did the adjuster screws.

If the finderscope isn't far enough forward the adjuster screws will touch the wider part of the finderscope leading to the need to "back them off" to the extent you describe...

 

[LukeSkywatcher]

"It's slightly difficult to discern, but it might be that the finderscope isn't seated in the holder correctly".

The 1st and 2nd image, to me looks something like that. 

[John]

The finder looks to be a little too far back in the mount to me

The adjustment screw tips should sit in the recess machined around the finder tube - this is visible in the photos wheras normally I'd expect it to be covered by the rear bracket ring.

I assume that the rubber "O" ring is in place around the finder tube to hold it in the front ring of the bracket ?

[gtis]

I had the same problem with the RDF on my evolution 6 had to pack it up with some card

[Ben the Ignorant]

I was in the same trouble with a red dot finder; tried a shim as a solution but turned out the finder shoe was not parallel to the telescope tube. As Peter Drew says, slackening the screws that hold the finder shoe to the telescope tube allowed to seat the shoe right.

[Geoff Lister]

Like Ben, above, I had a misaligned shoe on the RDF of my 90mm Mak. As the OTA diameter is small, and the 2 shoe mounting bolts are close together, a small assembly error throws the shoe off-axis. Because the assembly uses non-captive nuts inside the sealed main tube, I just slackened one bolt very slightly, was able to "persuade" the shoe to point forwards, and then re-tightened both bolts.

[ronin]

You may have to pack one end or the other, this has come up a few times. Not sure what the packing material should be as cardboard would slowly compress over time.

The presumption is that the Celestron finder fits a Celestron scope, no guarantee of that and then it could be which Celestron scope does it fit best, and it may not be yours.

Bit like RDF's, it seems that Williams made one of the first decent ones, so it got copied, so in most cases a Celestron/Skywatceher/TS/XYZ RDF is a clone of the WO and so may have a brand on it but doesn not quite match the scope fittings. Look at the astro retailers they sell shoes for different scopes and I guess that even if you have a Celestron scope and a Celestron finder then you could still need an aftermarket Celestron finder shoe to get it to actually fit right.