Telescope Accessories
When choosing telescope accessories, there's it's a matter of trade-offs. You want options but you also want low cost and low weight. You finder scope can move across the entire spectrum.
I've picked some low-cost and, coincidentally, low weight choices for finders.
Typically, a finder scope is small telescope, with the power of your binoculars, attached to your main telescope and aligned to look at the same place in the sky. They are useful but are the most expensive and heavy of the choices. They can't be beat for scanning large areas of the sky with a slight magnification. This one is very easy to use because is has a small mirror built-in that makes it easy to view without putting your head at an odd and uncomfortable angle.. The image also matches what you see when looking toward the sky without optical aid. These are call RACI Finders. RACI stands for "Right Angle, Correct Image". I recommend the Orion 9x50 RACI Finder model.
The true Holy Grail of finders is a red-dot finder. These tools don'tmagnify the stars at all. It shows a tiny little red-dot when you look through a small viewing window. By putting the red dot on a star, it helps you find objects quickly and with far less frustration than using just your telescope or even the finder scope. There are different models and most are quite inexpensive. I like the one built by Starpoint by Celestron because it's very iinexpensive and light weight.
An advanced model of red-dot finders is the Telrad. These actually don't project a red-dot but instead show three concentric rings of 4, 2 and half a degree on a transparent window. This is very helpful for finding object to dim to see naked eye, but that are located near a bright star. Your star atlas acts as your roadmap when using a Telrad finder.
Each is I have all three types of finders, the small telescope, the red-dot finder and the Telrad, on my main telescope and I use the simple, inexpensive red-dot finder most often.
Have fun!
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