Hi Swagman,
Lasers are great and will do well for you with all the things you have mentioned.
I used to use one and it was very easy to use the hand controller for my scope to slew to the star using the laser as a guide. I use this when polar aligning. 10mw Green laser is perfect.
Lasers are very useful for this and they are safe when used with common sense. There are a few people that think lasers are bad but everyone I have met that use lasers are intelligent people that have common sense and there have been 0 negative issues. I guess some people have seen idiots use lasers.
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1 Would there be a problem (legally and practically) in using a laser pointer of sufficient power to be suitable for this purpose
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Check with your local state laws. Some require that you are part of an astronomy club but other states may be different.
Practically they are fun and easy to use, I used to simply hold my finger on the laser on button whilst slewing. The laser only needs to be on for a short amount of time.
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2 What would be the best bracket with which to replace the red dot finder on the Prodigy's 6 inch SCT tube. I would still like to do this to allow the use of a small optical finder.
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This works well, see pics, home made but you can see how easy it would be to make of buy something similar.
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3 What would the best way be to secure such a bracket to the SCT tube.
Any advice will be gratefully received
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Double sided auto adhesive tape - works very well so make sure you put it somewhere that does not get in the way of other bits on tube.
Cheers,
Damien.