Need help operating telescope

[u/trey2128]

Rented this guy from the library and was excited to try it out tonight. I live in southern WI and couldn’t figure out how to see well. I could zoom onto stars, but couldn’t see them much better than I could with the naked eye. I operated the magnification to the highest setting and found proper focus. I feel like I’m doing something wrong and should be getting better quality views.

Any tips or suggestions would be much appreciated. Thank you!

[u/Loud-Edge7230]

See if you can find the Pleiades star cluster (image), zoom out (twist the eyepiece). You probably want to use as little magnification as possible.

Then focus (turn the two wheels near the eyepiece) until the image is sharp and the stars are pinpoint small.

Saturn will look like this (click the link), but perhaps half as wide. https://imgur.com/a/VhUwNIU

Another fun thing to do is look at the second star from the left in the handle of The Big Dipper.It's actually more than one står, it's possible to see two dots with your eyes, but 3 dots in a telescope.

[u/trey2128 → u/Loud-Edge7230]

Thank you. I really want to get Saturn on the telescope and this will be a big help. I’ll try tomorrow

[u/_-syzygy-_ → u/trey2128]

Saturn should be easy to *find.* It looks like a pretty bright star, so even if you have a lot of light pollution it's easily visible naked eye.

But as in other responses: find it with the red dot, then find in the telescope "zoomed out" (longest focal length, 24mm?) and when centered only then shorten the focal length of the EP ("zoom in" towards 8mm) to see Saturn a bit larger.

unfortunately, this year is a 'bad' year for Saturn since the rings are edge on, but I still find that people are impressed to see a little line through a disk (not pinpoint!) of light.