Three things: Seeing conditions, Collimation, Primary mirror Cooling
1. what is mars looking like at around the same latitude, can you see surface smudges on it or is it a red swirl. Moons, star constellations can hide the lousy turbulence and still give an alright view. If i see any distortions (heat waves) on the moon, then the seeing is not good and therefore surface detail on mars or tight structure on brighter stars will not be there. Sirius A is a classic. Last night after 8 hours of cooling due to constantly falling temps, Sirius A was very settled for the first time. My collimation was very good and the atmosphere was very calm at 3am. I was splitting many doubles easily with my 12mm.
2. *Collimation is different to coma. Coma will be more of an eyepiece issue . I have only just sorted out collimation after starting 5 months ago and stars are now pinpoint.
3. temp differences greater than 1 or 2 degrees from mirror to ambient will cause the same bad seeing conditionns as #1.
*Collimation is 3 steps for me:
1. secondary mirror.
2. primary mirror with a cheshire.
3. primary mirror with a star test.
http://www.schlatter.org/Dad/Astronomy/collimate.htm is great for one and 2.
http://legault.club.fr/collim.html is great for step 3.
I bought a $29 cheshire and whilst it is not the best, I have used it to get very good collimation. It can align the secondary reasonably well (a sight tube would be better) and then because i have centre spotted my primary mirror, it gets a fairly good line up for the primary. Star tests then finish this off
But don't try and star test without letting you scope cool. Try and let you scope cool for at least 1/2 hr after the temperature outside has stopped dropping otherwise the mirror won't keep up.
The main thing is to get a star of magnitude 0 or 1 at around 200x which you could do with your 9mm. defocus and focus
Then max up the mag on a -1 or -2 star.
Make sure they are nice and high 75 degrees or more and make sure the defocussed images are in the middle of the field of view.
I would suggest reading up the links above, think about buying a good sight tube and a cheshire. Get some prices and names of suppliers and come and share with us.
Come back and ask lots of questions.
I would say i am a fanatic and will try and get out there if there is even a hint of a view thru rain clouds. So if it has taken me 5 months, to get a handle on collimation is not a quick couple of tips. Unfortunately it is one of those constantly learning experience thingys!