More Little Discoveries

I actually did roll Big Bertha out last night....but discovered that I could not actually look through the finderscope to get the telescope aimed at Saturn.  Why?  Because before, the finderscope was mounted low enough on the upper cage that I could look through it because my cheek was actually inside the tube.  Now, that's not possible.  One solution was to machine something that lifted the finderscope away from the tube.

The other alternative is to use a right-angle finderscope (and I have one of those lying around).  The downsides are:

1. I have to move one of the mounting rings on the current finderscope bracket down an inch, because the right-angle finderscope is a bit shorter.

2. The right-angle finderscope is a very nice University Optics 8x50mm, but the eyepiece lacks not only illuminated crosshairs -- it lacks crosshairs.  I think I will be able to move the illuminated crosshair eyepiece from the current finderscope to the new one -- perhaps with a little bit of making some sort of adapter on the lathe.

I confess that having switched to a straight through finderscope some years ago, I find the idea of switching back to the right-angle finderscope increasingly attractive.  While it is an unnatural feeling to use one of these on a telescope, having the finderscope sitting 5" away from the scope tube isn't wonderful, either.

On the plus side, hunting for the right-angle finderscope this morning in the telescope garage also brought to light some of the self-adhesive black flocking material and another Losmandy counterweight.  Right now, I have corrected the additional weight of the solid tube with a bucket that holds one of those citronella candles -- it's a bit silly looking.