It was finally dark enough...but I had rolled Big Bertha out the front door of the garage, not the rear door, where the rolling warehouse ladder is. And to be honest, I was a bit too scared on the stepladder in the dark to stay there. I am more than a little afraid of falling off of it in the dark.
In addition, the field of view on the right-angle finderscope that I found in my parts collection was so narrow that I was unable to get it on Saturn so that I could try and get the telescope on it. This particular finderscope is an older University Optics 8x50mm that was on Big Bertha when I bought it at auction, and it does not have illuminated crosshairs. Worse, it looks like the diagonal and eyepiece may have come from some other finderscope -- it is a very clumsy focuser, and it probably makes more sense to buy a new one. And no, it isn't possible to swap the eyepiece from one finderscope to the other.
Do you have a 1x finder?
ReplyDeleteI'm not much of an astronomer, so the things I can find (planets, moon, M42) tend to work well with my Telrad. Even for someone that really knows the sky, I would think that a reflex sight to get close and a finder scope to refine would be a good combination.