On Thu, 28 Aug 2003 05:26:52 GMT, "Steve"
wrote:

I have a Celestron 114gt telescope with a 2 eyepieces (10mm & 25mm), with 4
filters (pale blue, orange, violet, yellow/green) and an adjustable 2-3x
barlow. What would be the best way to view Mars from this telescope? I
tried a 25 mm piece with a 3x barlow setting and Mars appeared a little
blurry with very difficult to make out features. This scope is a 4.5 inch
aperture with a 1000mm focal length. Any suggestions on how to improve my
viewing?

TIA

If this is the same scope that costco was selling you need to
collimnate it first.
The club I belong to had a mars party for the public and alot of
people showed up with these units. Nice little scope and I had a look
through several of them.
But while the sun was still setting we were running around helping
people learn how to set them up, we noticed that the MAJORITY of them
were WAY out of adjustment. And the instruction manuals way of
collimnation leaves ALOT to be desired.
And out of alignment will give you bad views. There are SEVERAL web
sites about doing collimnation, just do a search on google.com or even
sky and telesopes website has a How To for this..
www.skyandtelescope.com I think is the address.