Mackmackem

Thanks for your comments, I will certainley try them. Tiny Clanger The eyepieces I have with scope are 4mm, 8mm and 30mm and the scope in the shortcut is the one I have. Cheers again for the advice

I am very new to star gazing and this may seem a really stupid question, but its getting me really frustrated. My daughters gave me a National Gegraphic 76/700 for my birthday a few days ago. I have set the mount up and set up the viewfinder, I have located various stars via the viewfinder, when i look into the scope with a 'small' zoom lens I can see the star in which I was looking for but it does not magnify it very much, more or less similar to the viewfinder, once I have the star i.e. Mars in the centre of the viewfinder I have tried combinations of eye pieces and barlow lens and erecting lens and for the love of me cannot zoom in on the star, in fact I don't see anything, I know I must be doing something really stupid and easy to sort, but I have tried rotating and raising and lowering the viewfinder in case I moved the scope. Much appreciated if someone can tell this old dinosaur what he's doing wrong,