Telescope Reviews: Replacement finderscope/bracket for old ETX-RA?

First off, welcome to Cloudy Nights and the ETX forum. Please accept our condolences on your brother's passing.

There's several options, and each one is valid and largely comes down to the personal preference of the individual as well as practicality.

It sounds like the 8x21 finder is probably a traditional, straight-through finder scope. These are essentially a miniature refractor that you look through to help align your scope on bright objects to put your scope in the ballpark of where you want to be. They're simple, functional, and come in a variety of sizes. Many folks steer clear of anything smaller than a 30mm objective on these scopes, and a good many prefer lower magnification for a wider field of view, which aids in putting you in the area you want to be.

Related to the finder scopes are what are called Right Angle Correct Image (or RACI) scope. These put a 90° diagonal at the end of the finder's tube, and then a small eyepiece atop that. This has the benefit of positioning you so you're not craning your neck trying to aim parallel to the optical tube assembly (or OTA, the main "body" of your scope.) It also "flips" the image to correct orientation, making it easier for some folks to aim. The downside is that some find it a nuisance to take their eye away from the main scope's eyepiece in order to aim with the RACI.

Finally (at least for the purposes of this reply), there are reticle-style finders. These are zero-magnification devices that superimpose an illuminated dot or other pattern (called a reticle) over the night sky and allow you to zero in on your target. The most popular example of this style of finder is the Telrad. An original Telrad is likely a little too large to mount on your ETX-RA, but there are a variety of smaller, low-profile red-dot finders to be found. Some have even gotten very simple BB-gun red-dot sights and mounted them on their scopes and they've worked very nicely.

So what this comes down to is whether you want to try to match what the ETX may have originally had, or find something that easy and practical for you to use. Again, this is largely a very subjective preference. Perhaps if you found a local astronomy club near-by and contacted them, they could tell you when the next public "star party" they are conducting will be held, and you can very likely see examples of all of these finders in action first-hand.

I'm uncertain from your post if the bracket itself is broken, or the base of the finder. If it's the bracket and is a standard dovetail bracket, you can likely find replacements at most major scope outfitters like Astronomics or Orion. If it's a proprietary bracket, made just for that finder, it's going to be difficult in the extreme to come up with a replacement. At that point, you'd be better off replacing the bracket/finder assembly.

Hope this helps. Again, welcome to CN!

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Tim

Champion of small aperture scopes everywhere!

Meade ETX-125PE
Meade ETX-80
Celestron FirstScope 76mm Mini-dob

Updated: 09/16/2009