Celestron Astromaster 114

[PengJet]

Hello all, I just picked up this wonderful looking telescope, and as a beginner to advanced optics and stargazing...I humbly seek the communities help.

I browsed through existing forums and found similar issues, so I'll go ahead and pre-emptively answer some questions.

1) I was trying to observe a near full, waning moon, and I could distinguish the contrast between "space" and a "celestial body", but all else was naught but blurry.

2) The image was truly bright, but very blurry.

3) I was outside, with all caps removed.

4) I inspected the eyepiece thing (sorry, learning part nomenclature), removed some dust, and I checked for the possibility of there being a factory protective plastic film...much like what we find on screens or phones.

5) I could tell the eyepiece focusing knob was doing it's job, as in enlarging the image as well as the opposite, but it was still blurry. At it's most "zoomed out" setting, the moon was still (relatively of course) huge in the sight. If the moon could fit in it's entirety of the sight, I'd call that 100%....it the sights most zoomed out, it was about 1000% or greater...

Any experience with this scope? Any ideas?

-Cheers

[ryandsimmons]

To be honest it sounds like a focusing issue.  I would advise just trying again, this time do the full range of knob twiddling, from as far out as it goes to as far in.

The actual sweet spot is fairly small but should be obvious as you go past it.

[PengJet]

Thank you, I'll check that out tonight if the weather allows.

[Knight of Clear Skies]

I agree that it sounds like a focussing problem, when focussing you want to make objects as small as possible. The easiest thing to do is try it in daylight, it will be easier to see if the image is getting sharper or not. Just be careful not to point it at the Sun please.

[NGC 1502]

+1 for post # 4.  Best to try that on a distant target, see what happens.

Start with the lowest power eyepiece, that's the one with the highest number like 25mm, gives the widest field of view.  

Also a good opportunity to align the finder - once you have something you can recognise in the eyepiece, then adjust the finder to match. 

Hope you sort it, Ed.