When I started in astronomy, way back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (in the early 1970s!), my primary problem was actually moving the focuser to the point where the stars were points rather than blobs. Took me a surprisingly long time!!
It could be a simple matter that you need to move the focuser to the right place; best to point the telescope at a bright star in the sky, and then move the focusser till the star is a point rather than a large blob(Out of focus). Or focus on the moon.
Then, everything else you look at will be in focus.
Another difficult problem when you are a beginner is
actually finding the object, because the field of a telescope is sort of like "a narrow porthole in the sky" and therefore it is
easier to miss an object than to find it if you try hunting around for it with the main telescope instead of hunting around for it with the Finder Telescope or "optical sighter" ;
before using the telescope to find astronomical objects, it is of great importance to first align the Finder Telescope's view accurately with the field of view of the telescope. Point the telescope at a distant landmark, and get the landmark centred in the telescope. Then adjust the finder till it is accurately centred on the landmark.
(can also use a bright star in the sky for this exercize)
The objective of this exercize is : when the Finder Telescope or Red Dot Finder or Telrad or "Optical
sighting tube" is centred on the object you want to look at, the object should also be visible in the field of the telescope at low power.
(always find objects using the finder, and then use the lowest available power to acquire the object in the telescope; use the longest focal length eyepiece)
-madgalaxyman
