Okay, to put things more clearly:
Forget the lens flare... that can be done by anyone willing to make a new bitmap. But can they be made to fade in/out? I.e. have a specified fade time, during which the image scales from 50% size and 0% optipacity to 100% scale and optipacity?
exactly the thing I asked for

The lense flare thing was actually asking for someone to make a new bitmap
Actually thats just regular space crap floating by, asteroid chunks are smaller and smaller pofs.
yes. I mean this stuff here:
I think that if we'd replace it with little chunks (which you can apply effects like glowing, or leaving trails, etc like in the Freelancer image) it would look ... a lot better
