EI002 Illuminator

Good value and it's very light

Two issues I've found:

1. The minimum brightness is a bit bright when trying to aim at faint stuff. It just needs to be barely brighter than the sky background, and at a light polluted site it would be ok, but at a dark site (where you need it most), it's a bit too bright. I took a sharpie to the LED to dim it a bit and that helped.

2. It's too heavy and acts as lever against the focusing mechanism of the finder. In warm weather, the grease in the helical focuser of a Stellarvue finder is quite viscous and depending on the telescope's orientation, the weight of the illuminator actually causes it to rotate. A counter-weight on the other side of the focuser is needed.

Light weight, aesthetic appearance, smooth turn anc click on/off dial, and clear well defined crosshairs.

This crosshair reticle illuminator seamlessly replaced an older and less well-designed unit in an SV illuminated finder eyepiece. The crosshairs are illuminated well, and the illumination is fully adjustable by the micrometer-style rheostat. I have only two suggestions for improvement. First, like all other illuminators I have seen, this one uses watch-style batteries, which are expensive and whose particular size might be challenging to find at the local drug store. A single AAA-driven unit would be better. Second, a black hash mark in the switch and main body, aligned when the unit is "off," would be appreciated. I will be adding such to mine shortly. However, this is a fine illuminator unit--4 stars.

I recently purchased the illuminator to pair up with a Stellarvue 10x60 RACI finderscope. The illuminator has a great, precise feel to the rheostat with fine control of the output illumination. It does a great job of illuminating the crosshairs without overpowering the view. Well done!

I bought one of these several years ago along with a Stellarvue reticle eyepiece. As you would expect from Stellarvue, the combination worked flawlessly. As an active lunar and planetary imager, I gradually accumulated additional reticle eyepieces with illuminators of highly variable quality. I recently purchased two more of the Stellarvue illuminators so that these eyepieces could be used when needed with no surprise outages.

Very pleased.

Limited use so far but vastly superior to prior model. Seems sturdy and variable controls work well. Maybe a 5* with more use.

Mechanically very sound. Perfect fit for my Stellarvue Finder. Smooth brightness control and not too bright. Works beautifully.