glend
11-11-2015, 11:14 AM
After a recent bout of vertigo I decided bending over a finderscope is a young man's game. I am considering building a simple video finderscope that I can use to align objects from the safety of my chair. This is for primarily for my imaging rigs, as I don't do much visually these days, so the imaging camera and guide camera are already onboard. Is it overkill to add a video finderscope when I have two cameras there already? It seems that my guide scope is rarely locked to the tube aiming point, and the FOV of the imaging camera is too small for finderscope. I have an unused Orion 70mm multipurpose scope that I can convert for finderscope duties, it has a helical focuser so It's shoud work. Any ideas for a camera that would be a fairly low cost solution. It's needs to be sensitive enough for stars that might be General alignment magnitude, or higher magnitude DSOs . I was thinking of a low end ASI. Any ideas? Suggestions? Anyone one done this? Or should I just use the guidescope (which has an ASi130mm on it now)? I see the use of the guidescope as a finderscope to be a hassle as if I am moving from one target to the next, the guidescope will be set on the last guidestar and not necessarily scope aligned.
I can hear the experts saying well if your alignment is perfect you don't need a finderscope, the target should be in the FOV of the camera, in my dreams!
I can hear the experts saying well if your alignment is perfect you don't need a finderscope, the target should be in the FOV of the camera, in my dreams!