How do I aim at anything?

[Classifier_66]

Sorry for the newbie question, but whenever I aim at stars with my celestron starpointer, I find nothing. The only star I was able to find was Betelgeuse after 30 minutes of slowly moving my telescope near it.

Am I supposed to move the telescope a bit up to compensate that the pointer is a bit more up than the telescope? Should the red dot be directly pointing at the star? Am I doing this completely wrong?

[domstar]

It's best to adjust it during the day. Point it at a far away chimney and adjust the pointer so that it is pointing at the same place that you see through the eyepiece. Use the eyepiece with the largest number as that will show the least magnification and the most sky. Always start with the least magnification (I would've saved so much time and frustration with that tip).

You've come to the right place. Welcome to the hobby. Keep the questions coming.

Edited December 26, 2019 by domstar

[Classifier_66]

17 minutes ago, domstar said:

It's best to adjust it during the day. Point it at a far away chimney and adjust the pointer so that it is pointing at the same place that you see through the eyepiece. Use the eyepiece with the largest number as that will show the least magnification and the most sky. Always start with the least magnification (I would've saved so much time and frustration with that tip).

You've come to the right place. Welcome to the hobby. Keep the questions coming.

Would it be safe since the sun is around? And just eyeballing it an ok method or should I be using the co ordinate system?

[domstar]

Good point. Don't go anywhere near the sun. It's been so long since I've seen it that I'd forgotten it existed. Use a far point that isn't anywhere near the sun. The pointer should get you near it. Look through the eyepiece and centre the object in the eyepiece. Then adjust the pointer so it's pointing at what you're looking at through the eyepiece. Then, at night, if you point at a star, you should be able to see it in the eyepiece. I don't use co-ordinates but I do use the program Stellarium, which is free to download. It gives me ideas for what to look at and how to find them. First stop in winter is always the Orion Nebula. Have fun.

[Stu]

Ideally you should be able to align the Starpointer exactly with the scope so that when you point it at the target, the object appears in the eyepiece. However, having used one of these finders on one of our club members scopes, I found it impossible to get exactly aligned, it ran out of adjustment range. I'm not very impressed with these finders I must say, seems more attention was paid to fancy design and not enough to it actually working!

You may be able to put shims under the finder shoe to give it enough range to be properly aligned, otherwise it's a matter of allowing for the error when finding targets ie once you have found a bright star in the eyepiece, see where the pointer is pointing and then use this to put the pointer in the right place relative to other targets which should then be in the eyepiece. Make sense?

My best advice though would probably be to buy another finder!

[CloudMagnet]

I would recommend investing in a Telrad finder, it makes finding objects many times easier and you can also see the sky around it, making it really intuitive to use- made my life a lot less stressful afterwards. I also made the mistake of using the standard Celestron red dot finder but I would never go back to it now.

[markse68]

Assuming you have a Newtonian scope (?) worth checking your scope isn’t way off collimation as that will change alignment of the finder too

[Mick H]

I agree with Stu and CloudMagnet, the craptastic red dot that came with my scope soon got binned for a Telrad.

 

[NGC 1502]

As previously mentioned some of the red dot finders fitted to certain Celestron telescopes are definitely not fit for purpose. Shame on them for fitting a vital part that will serve to make the otherwise useful telescope almost unusable.

Over the years we’ve had several folk bring their Celestrons to my local club for help, we were baffled as to how they managed to design such a poor finder.

The Celestron Astromaster Newtonian scopes were one example of that.  Later models had a much better and more useful finder.    If anyone is struggling with one of the earlier finders, it’s well worth upgrading it.

Ed.

[skybadger]

I'd persevere. as long as you can align the dot location to the scope  view, you'll soon get used to looking at the dot and ignoring the rest of the finder. 

[Stu]

1 hour ago, skybadger said:

I'd persevere. as long as you can align the dot location to the scope  view, you'll soon get used to looking at the dot and ignoring the rest of the finder. 

I think that's part of the problem though, the finder can't be properly aligned.

[joe aguiar]

I also agree some of those pointers dont have enough slack to get it perfectly to the main scope.

Try aligning it at dat then again closer at night. As long as u get the object in fov in low power ep then that may be the best those kinds will get u.

If after a month or 2 it still fustrates u then u should get a rigel finderscope instead.

Joejaguar 

[skybadger]

If it's not aligning, check out the mounting foot first. 

That's where the coarse errors lives. Adjust the shoe. The moulding of an rdf from a die is at least as precise as the other components if not more so. 

HTh