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Hi Lee,
RE: C Nexstar4SE
this scope is a Maksutov-Cassegrain type telescope aimed to the beginner. It does most of the hard work for you like aligning procedures, finding objects and tracking. But do not get fooled! The 40.000 objects database is that big because it contains objects from northern and souther hemisphere up to a magnitude of about 20, for some objects even 30. Only a fraction of this is visible in this scope due to your location on this planet and the limiting magnitude of the scope (probably something around 12.5 but maybe more).
Catadioptric systems like Mak´s need some time to cool down before they provide clear images, but once they are cool (with this scope I reckon it takes about 45min) they provide very good images of planets and lunar landscapes. You will see the Orion nebula and a few open or globular clusters - but forget about all the other dim nebulosities and galaxies that are either to big for the long focal length or to faint for the limiting maginitude of this scope especially under suburbian skies. And do not forget, planets and even the moon are only available at certain times of the year.
In my experience, the biggest "hold me or I fall over" effect comes from large apperture- short focal lenght- telescopes. Imagine you could open your very own pupils to 200mm instead of 7mm and consider that per every 20mm more apperture the light gathering capacity increases by roughly 20%. With such big eyes you could see the milky way from horizon to horizon in its full beauty including the huge nebulosities that span areas as big as notebooks held at armlength even from a not-so-far off CBD suburb. More focal lengt reduces your field of view. In case of the 4SE to the size of a cigarette package compared to naked eye and gives you darker but contrast rich visual images.
The other thing is that the mount is simply not made to hold anything more than the scope and an eyepiece and would introduce field rotation in exposures longer than 30seconds anyways due its nature as an alt/az mount.-no go for photography IMO.
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