I’ve been working with Serge at AstroDevices for many years. First to integrate ScopeDog, then the various eFinder developments. He really is a knowledgeable and helpful person.
It is clear that more and more visual astronomers are starting to adopt plate-solving finders for their scopes. Other than eFinder there are - Celestron Starsense Explorer, then PiFinder and now others are emerging.
With the close integation already achieved it was kind of obvious to Serge and myself that we should integrate the eFinder controls and display into the Nexus DSC Pro itself. The result, now ready, is the Nexus eFinder …
With a single USB cable to the Nexus DSC Pro, and all the functionality of previous eFinders (plus full ServoCat & Sky Tracker support), it really is a neat add-on.
As well as assisting with the initial 2-‘star’ alignment process, the key benefit of the Nexus eFinder is being able to sync the Nexus DSC Pro to true sky RA & Dec at any time. No more moving off to perform a Local Sync on a nearby bright star!
You can now have the dynamic responsiveness of the encoders, with the sub-arc minute accuracy of plate-solving. The plate-solve is in fact accurate to about 15 arc seconds, but flexure in the telescope OTA will always add some error.
As with previous models, it has a’Live’ mode where without a Nexus DSC Pro, it transmits telescope position to SkySafari over wifi.
It will be available both as a DIY build, and ready assembled by AstroDevices.