[Suzy]

Jason,

I'm with Peter- go for the 82deg Explore Scientific's- even tho I haven't tried them, I've heard many good things and lots of people on this forum have them. From what people are saying, I understand they are quality eyepieces. Only $99 on sale at the moment!!!
I've also tried the 7mm TMB- quite good also on planets.
If you have a quality ep, you will get better colours and contrast on those planets anyway without really needing to have to filter. Stay off white toned eps for planets (washes them out as my Meade UWA 5000 does) and head towards neutral and coffee toned for planetary viewing. I don't honestly know what tone the E.S. ones are, I just know the Pentax (which I own) are neutral & just beautiful on planets, and the Naglers have a slight coffee/warm tone which apparently is good too on planets I've read. When I tried the TMB 7mm, I was very happy with the tone- seemed neutral to me, brought up colours on Jupiter quite nicely, albeit out of focus as I had some issues with it and had to send it back (seems my scope just didn't like that ep, no one else seems to have had any problems).

The last time I've needed to use a filter on a planet was the last time Mars was in our skies (18mths ago? seems ages ago) and I popped in the blue filter to see the snow cap - was quite awesome!

The UHC filter is not for planetary- as mentioned in my post, they are for nebulas.