Planets just look like dots! Beginner telescope, hoping for some advice I'm very new to astronomy and got myself a cheap, used  700mm 70mm diameter refractor scope and am able to see (what I think are) good images of the moon. However when I try to view planets I see nothing but a very small dot! Pretty sure I was looking at Mars this eve (slight red colour) but with a 10mm lens its still just a dot. I can make out no detail. Same with Jupiter. Should I be able to see detail with the specs I have? Thanks in advance.
Most likely you will not see much detail except that they are a really tiny disc and don't wobble like stars.
The moon has an apparent diameter of 30' (half a degree) in the sky. Mars' apparent diameter varies between 3.5&quot; and 25&quot; (so about between 1/1000° and 1/120°). Thus at closest approach Mars is still about 60x smaller than the moon, currently at ~&lt;10&quot;, it's about 1/180 compared to the Moon). How much detail do you see at such tiny fraction of the Moon in your telescope?
You can expect to see on Mars maybe some very slight colour variation between equator and poles. On Jupiter with an apparent diameter of ~50&quot; (thus twice Mars' apparent size) you might see some slight colour changes with the cloud bands in its atmosphere and on Saturn you might see that it has rings.
All the images with details on the surface are both, taken with a camera and selected for (missing) atmospheric distortion and post-processed to enhance the features, and taken with a larger telescope where you can use a larger magnification.
But even with a larger telescope (longer focal length AND larger apperture), you WILL need to have good seeing; there are nights where even with a clear sky, also a larger telescope will not resolve features due to the seeing, thus the influence of Earth's atmospheric disturbances.