Took me 6 months to realize my telescope finder scope was pointing at a different patch of sky than the main tube

3 comments

3 Comments

Wait did your friend ever find out why it was off? My buddy Dave spent two weeks trying to figure out why he couldn't see Saturn's rings, turns out his finder scope was aimed at his neighbor's chimney the whole time. He finally aligned them by pointing at a water tower a mile away and matching the crosshairs.

coleman.seth11d ago

Man, that story about the chimney is hilarious! I had a very similar issue with mine a while back. What finally worked for me was using a distant cell tower about 3 miles away during the day. I just centered the main scope on it, then fiddled with the finder scope screws until the crosshairs pointed exactly at the same spot. Took maybe 10 minutes but once it was dialed in, finding things like Jupiter and the moon at night became stupidly easy. Definitely beats guessing where a bright star is in the dark.

uma_nguyen2410d ago

Dude yes, the cell tower trick is genius! I did the exact same thing with a radio tower about 2 miles away last month, and it made such a difference. After that, finding Saturn at night was literally a 30 second job instead of fumbling around in the dark for 20 minutes.