Telescopes have such a big magnification that it is very hard to point them directly to a specific point in the night sky. The field of view is just too small. Point your telescope up anywhere you want and when you look through the eyepiece, you’ll just see a bunch of random stars and will most likely have no idea what you are looking at. That is where finder-scopes come in.

Finder-scopes are those miniature telescopes you see on top of every normal telescope. They help you find an object will little or no magnification and a wide field of view, so you can look at the details through the telescope.

In order for the finder-scope to help the big telescope find the object of your choice, they need to be aligned when you set up your telescope though. I’ll share my alignment method soon.

Finder-scopes show a reticle overlayed over the image for precision purposes. But the 2 crossing black lines are heard to see when it is really dark against the dark night sky. They work fine whilst the sun is setting and will do the job for astrophotographers as the finder-scope is no longer needed once the motorized telescope mounts have been aligned. But observers might want to upgrade to illuminated finder scopes.

Red-dot finder-scopes

Red-dot finder-scopes solve this problem by replacing the reticle with an illuminated pattern. This adds the need for a battery though but allows us to find a target when it is pitch black.