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Brent,
I'll try to be brief.
M is for Messier. His final catalog of some 103 objects was published in 1781. However, it now officially has 110 objects.
He was a comet hunter and made note of nebulous objects that might be mistaken for comets. We now know these objects include many nebulae, globular clusters and galaxies.
You need to start with the brighter stars and try to match these to your maps. A planisphere would help you to position the constellations in the sky at different times of the night and different times of the year. Once you can identify the major stars in a constellation you can star hop to a selected object.
The night sky appears to rotate from east to west, 15 degrees each hour, because of the rotation of the Earth. However, all stars and galaxies remain fixed relative to each other as the sky moves. Because they are closer to us, the planets can be seen to move across the background sky of stars over time.
A moon filter will reduce its light in a telescope for more comfortable viewing. Filters of different types can used to enhance features in an object e.g. nebular filter to enhance emissions. Some filters can be used to reduce skyglow. However, they won't make an object brighter but simply reduce the background light. I wouldn't bother with them until you are more experienced and know exactly what your needs are.
A telescope needs to have its mirrors aligned (not saying yours isn't) so that all incoming light is focussed to the eyepiece centre. If mirrors are misaligned then stars will not focus as nice points and objects will appear fuzzier. For example, close binary stars will be hard to split. A laser collimator or cheshire collimator can assist in the collimation (alignment) of optics.
A galaxy is a very large gravitationally bound system of stars. Our Milky Way is a spiral galaxy. The Orion Nebula is just a reflection and emission nebulae of dust and gases within our galaxy.
A bright galaxy is the Sombrero Galaxy in Virgo but more easily found from Corvus. You will need a map to find it.
Regards, Rob
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