A Picatinny rail, mounted to my telescope:

 
Add a reflex site:

 
and BAM:

10 times easier star acquisition, and you can bump it all day long (or all night long I should say) and it will never loose its zero :)

No tac sac no true picatinny rail enthusiast!

You take improvise to a whole new level Nateman.

I still need to pull out my scopes and get them back working.

notfordman
That looks like a good idea Nateman! Did you have to disassemble the telescope to add the rail?  

Not at all, just stood it up drilled 2 corresponding holes and file to fit.  Air blasted the inside of the tube for any kind of metal shavings.  G2G.  Really makes such a difference!
 
I installed a second rail last night and installed a green laser pointer.  The Astronomy club that I go too uses green lasers to point out things in the sky.  So I did the same.  I will likely put it on my new "push-too" so that it can find objects, and I can take my smaller one (pictured above) to where the green laser ends.  Since the smaller one is my daughters scope, I can point the laser of the large telescope to an object and she can slew her's (this one) to view the same object all by her own and sight it in using the reflex site. 
 
To top things off, when she is older and I introduce her to firearms, she will already be familiar with a reflex sight, and she wont even realize it.
 
I managed to "zero" the green laser and the red-dot reflex at relatively the same spot on low level clouds, but I am not sure how it will work in practice on clear skies.  The beam should just "end" somewhere, so the idea is to move the beam's end to where I see the red dot in the reflex scope.  Hopefully it will be clear tonight and I can experiment. 

I added the green laser:

 
I cannot recommend this upgrade enough.  For those of you with telescopes.... its exactly what you have been looking for.
 
I initially used the reflex site to get a random star in the telescopes eyepiece.  made sure it was center.  (still this took only seconds to do with the reflex site)  Next I turned on the laser (used the optional push button on the cord, which turns it on only when holding it.  Then I adjusted the beam so it appeared to "end" directly on the star.
 
I can't really put into words how easy it is now to sight the telescope.  Its even easier with the laser.  You can turn it on without bending over or even closing one eye - put the beam on whatever you want to see, and its dead center in the telescopes eyepiece. 
 
The best part is that it wont loose its zero.  Its mean to retain its zero while the shock and recoil of a firearm.  So nudging this thing at night while observing wont do a thing to it.