Re: Red Dot Finder Scopes – Experiences?

[jlmanatee]

  I've used a Telrad, a cheap Celestron red dot and a couple traditional 50mm finders.  For an SCT, I love a Telrad.  Most of my work now is with refractors and I'm fairly happy with either a red dot or a 50mm finder.  Once the finder gets me in the ballpark, I like using a low power eyepiece, like a 32mm to center things up before moving on to higher powers.
    But now I'll tell you a bit about how I cheat these days.  I'm an imager and as such I'm more interested in getting on target as fast as I can.  But my field-of-view is pretty small, like 66×48 minutes, and I used to spend an inordinate amount of time getting an object centered.  First I use a goto  (Hey, I can see you visual guys rolling your eyes).  Second, I use Astrotortilla to snap an image, plate-solve it and then re-slew the mount if the coordinates are not correct.  It's a thing of beauty to sit back and let the software do it's thing (image, re-slew, repeat) till the target is centered. Finders?
Star hopping?  Hah!  😉