| This Antares white 12 x 80mm right-angle multicoated achromatic doublet finderscope is an excellent larger aperture/more convenient replacement for the smaller straight-through finders supplied with many older Meade Dobsonian scopes and equatorial reflectors. It allows you to comfortably use the finderscope without having to turn your head upside down to view near the zenith, as you do with the standard straight-through finder. Its neutral white color also lets it be used to replace the smaller finders that often come with most other brands of reflectors. Its large 80mm aperture has a limiting magnitude of 12, fainter than the stars on any commercial star chart, making it easy for you to locate faint nebulas and galaxies. The field of view is 4.33 degrees wide and the eye relief is a substantial 15mm. There is a rolldown rubber eyecup for eyeglass use. The finder weighs 44.5 ounces, without optional finder bracket. This may cause balance problems with some scopes that could require an extra counterweight to remedy. The finder comes without a mounting bracket, but an 11-ounce quick release dovetail bracket is available as an option. This bracket can be mounted in the existing finderscope holes on the rear cell of an SCT, as well as on a reflector's optical tube. The 88mm diameter body of the finder is aluminum, painted in a neutral white and internally baffled for higher contrast. The black anodized aluminum lens cell has an extra long integral shade to retard the formation of dew and shield the objective from ambient light. The interior of the lens shade has anti-reflection grooving to further enhance contrast. The right-angle first-surface mirror diagonal gives images that are upright, but mirror-image reversed, as they are in the eyepiece of a refractor or catadioptric telescope. The supplied crosshair eyepiece is removable and has a standard 1.25" barrel. It is held in place by a thumbscrew to allow easy orientation of the crosshairs to match the optical axis of the scope. You first rough-focus the finder by loosening the thumbscrew in the diagonal’s eyepiece holder and sliding the eyepiece in and out of the diagonal until it is focused on infinity. The thumbscrew is then tightened to hold that focus. A diopter ring on the eyepiece allows you to fine-tune the focus for individual observers without having to loosen the thumbscrew or move the eyepiece.
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