unknown gift

[rowan46]

A friend of mine does car boot sales. knowing that i have recently started getting into astronomy gave me a 9mm meade illuminated cordless reticle eyepiece that he had picked up for pennies. My question is what do you use these things for and how do you use it, I have trawled the net but am still none the wiser. manufacturer says its for off axis guiding (whatever that is ) some people use it for improving the accuracy of their go-to which sounds more interesting. but nobody says how please help as the thought of having an eyepiece I can't use is somewhat frustrating. It works perfecly is in pristine condition and sits in my box doing nothing.

[Merlin66]

The eyepiece has an illuminated double cross wire and in the "ol' days" was used either with a guide scope or an off-axis guider. The idea was to keep the image of a star within the box at the middle of the crosswires while your camera took a long exposure image.

This is now done using guide cameras and software.

Your eyepiece could be used on a finder scope or used to help you "drift align" your mounting to get good polar alignment.

Ken