| This white Antares 12.5 x 80mm right-angle erect/right-reading image 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. The image-erecting amici prism built into the right-angle diagonal gives images that are correctly oriented (upright and right-reading), so that star patterns are seen exactly the way you see them on star charts and with your bare eye. This makes centering the scope on a target or star-hopping from object to object using the finder easier and more intuitive than with a mirror-image or inverted finderscope view. 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's 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 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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