Can't focus on bright stars?

[Bmanners]

With such a still and clear night I dug out the telescope and had some fun pointing it skyward. I however noticed that I was not able to get a good focus on bright stars. I'm new to this astronomy thing and I think I was looking at Canis Major and Minor as well as Betelgeuse in Orion. For all these stars I could only get a bright blur instead of a well defined point. I suspect this is a result of the very cheap telescope ($76 for a 76mm reflector that looks suspiciously like a Skywatcher 76mm reflector). Is this casued by cheap optics in my telescope or are all telecopes like this?

Dispite not being able to focus on the stars I got some amazing views of Saturn and the Orion Nebula.

Cheers
Brett

[iceman (Mike)]

Hi Brett.

It's most likely a combination of 1 or more things:

1) What eyepiece were you using? It's possible the power was too high for a) the scope and b) the seeing
2) What's the focal length of that telescope?
3) It's likely a result of a cheap plastic barlow (if it's one of those telescopes)
4) It's also likely a result of your collimation being out

[matt]

Yep ... that's about the full spread of possible culprits.

1 and 4 are the killers. Seeing and collimation will do it every time.

Having said that, it's more than likely your optics are a little challenged??

[ving (David)]

i know that stars are like.... suns, but i hope you are not ecpecting to see a little ball of fire that looks much like our sun... it just wont happen no matter what size scope you have.

reducing you magnification will resolve if to more of a pleasing point of light
dont barlow your EP unless you are trying to split a double or sumpin otherwise you will get the effect you described

I stared with a scope similar to yours but smaller (60mm) and you can get a wealth of objects with it, just dont magnify too much