sky align -- reticle eyepiece helps!

I have a new NexStar 8i SE. Until last night, aligning the scope was hit or miss. Some nights it worked great, others not at all. I tried de-focusing the stars to help with centering but that did not work well for me. So I ordered an illuminated reticle eyepiece.

Even though the wind was blowing and the scope was shaking, centering the objects in the reticle eyepiece was a snap, and I'm sure, much more accurate than any past attempts I made at estimating the process. And the alignment worked well. While not all objects were perfectly centered, they were all in the field of view.

I'd recommend one of these eyepieces to anyone who has been having difficulty with the alignment process.

Amy
One tip is to always use the right arrow button to move the scope to center the align star to it's final position as it takes up any gear backlash. So use the left button to go off center with the align star if it is past the center and then finalize with the right button. Do this on all align stars and accuracy will increase. Also make sure the scope is level and if you want to go one step further also only use up button last just like the right button . In other words finalize the star position in the cross hair with up an right buttons only.

Greg