Please ask your questions in the forum rather than your own personal blog. That way you will get more replies.

Hint about imaging , you may need to refocus your telescope to get a sharp image.

No, you should be able to get a result without a lens on the webcam and no eyepiece (with or without a barlow). Did you focus carefully? Also, did you try to control exposure/gain so that you can actually see features instead of a bright ball of light?

To increase the size of Jupiter, use a 2X or 3X barlow.

I used a 2x last Dec. and pulled banding using my Star shoot ll usb and I'm going to try a 3x telenegative barlow to achieve a better image scale so I can see better on the laptop and pull evenm more detail using my Black Widow 8 and lxd55 mount.