I had a chance to use with the scope a long time last night and things seemed to be much better now. I guess the moon was gone and the sky got much darker. Looking through the 5 mm at Mars do now reveals some details, like the polar cap and some dark patches on the surface. Mars look much sharper now. I now think the culprit might be the bright moon after all.

But still I can't see clearly the airy disk at all. Using the 12.5 mm Ultima and focus on the bright star Arcturus in the Bootis constellation revealed a very small point of light with flares all around it. Defocus it revealed a round doughnut shape, which is made up of bunch of bright concentric rings. There is a very small faint point of light in the middle, nothing like a big dot seen in the book and manual. Is it supposed to be like this? The doughnut shapes inside and outside of focus look the same. The book I read says this is a good sign of good optics. However, using the 5 mm Ultima and focus on Arcturus revealed a fuzzy ball that looked like ball of many small bubbles-no airy disk at all. The fuzzy ball of light looked as shown in the manual for poor seeing condition, but the sky was perfectly clear. Why?? Does your telescope also perform like this? Also the out-of-focus star image had outward smears from the outside of the doughnut shape. Is this right? The book does not mention this. As I focus the star, the doughnut shape get smaller (and brighter) and did not look as round as farther from focus. Have any idea? Do you see a perfectly round rings with big airy disk in the middle with your telescope? Please let me know if the optics are OK or not.