trouble with celestron or newb errors?

[capretta]

hi all, I recently recieved a celestron nexstar 130 and have been a little disappointed with the results.
The first thing i noticed was the r&p focuser was covered with an incredibly sticky water resistant clear substance that made exact focus very difficult to achieve. when i rang the store (austalian geographic sydney) that it was purchased from they rang me back suggesting that i should lubricate it with "dry lubricant you can buy from any photographic store". i assumed they meant graphite powder or something but no store in wollongong where i live sells it and i also wondered about it dirtying up the mirrors.
also the only telescope store in the region (wollongong camera house) has a very limited display of telescopes and EP but i wanted a barlow so i visited and left with a quite old looking meade barlow for $50. all their other stock was very overpriced and quite dusty but i got the barlow for half price so i thought it was ok.
i took the scope out a few weeks ago to observe saturn and set the scope up and alpha centuri through the 9x looked like a double star, and saturn through the barlow and 9x looked like a very fuzzy dark blob with no visible detail although through just the 9x it looked ok but way too small for any detail bar the rings.
i was given to understand that the max magnification for this scope was over the 300 mark and i am only pushing it to 120ish with the 9x and barlow together, soooooo

is this a collimation problem ( which i have tried to do by eye ) or are these probs dur to crap barlow/telescope? also what to do with the focuser?

ps. i am going to head along to the illawarra astronomy meeting next month and seek some hands on advice.. luckily it is very cloudy at the moment.. :)

thanks, cam

[Terry B]

Welcome Cam
Can't help with the specifics of your scope but:
1. Don't use graphite powder. You would never get it off the mirror.
2. My 200mm scope only just handles 220x mag. No chance of ever reaching 300x with the smaller scope without the image being a fuzzy blob. Resolution of a scope is proportional to the aperture, so the smaller scope will not magnify as far. The scope is not really optimal for planets but should give nice views of clusters etc at the lower power.

[capretta]

hmm thanks for the info on the lubricant. i figured as much. the fact that the chick in the shop had to call an "expert" to arrive at that answer gives me pretty much all the info i need about them..

focal lenth of my scope is 650mm, focal ratio 5, cant say i expected a little better performance than 70x useable magnification.. oh well i will spend some more time playing with it :D