papak

haha thanks sorry. i guess its obvious i'm new :)

hey guys i've had a Nexstar 4se for a little while now and I have a few questions. ok. so i was an idiot a couple years ago (mind you i'm only 14) and i made some pretty bad purchases. before i knew a telescopes magnification was determined by DIVIDING the telescope focal length by the eyepiece focal length, I thought eyepieces with larger focal lengths would give me more magnification. so, as one can imagine, I convinced my dad to get me a 40mm plossl eyepiece thinking it would offer almost twice the magnification. so now 3 years later, I have some extra christmas money, and I was thinking about getting some new accessories. luckily I am no longer an idiot, and this time i did a great thing called research. I found the sweet spot for my scope is around 12mm. I belong to an astronomy club, and the guys there also told me i could push my scope to a 12mm. so my question is, for my my type of viewing (no astrophotography) does it matter what type of 12mm eyepiece i get? I usually like sticking to celestron, (nostalgia, i guess) and the question is whether to get a 12mm omni (23 dollars) or a 12mm X-cel LX (72 dollars). i have 150 dollars, so price is not an issue. any suggestions? Also, after reading about how planetary filters are total Rubbish, I started getting interested in solar filters. Celestron also sells a solar telescope for 70 dollars, but after looking on amazon, i found a few solar filters (good internet reviews of course) for 4 inch scopes such as mine. look, I know i'm a little late for the venus transit, but still, i think it would be interesting to observe our home star for a change, especially during its activity peak. anyways, the question is whether to simply buy a safe filter (another question: are they 100% safe?...) off amazon or ebay, or just go ahead and buy a whole new scope. suggestions would be appreciated. my final question is about barlow lenses. look. I know barlows are all about preference, so you don't have to preach to me about how its my decision entirely. in fact, one of my idiotic purchases a few years ago was a barlow lens. I know a barlow will give me a huge image of m42, but is that at the cost of horrible resolution? in other words, barlow lenses will give you a larger image, but is the cost of that larger image a more blurry view? Thanks a lot, papak p.s. please do not comment with "i think's" and "i'm pretty sure's", and most definitely use proper grammar. I want descriptive information from people who are at least literate, and know what they are talking about.