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Brett, if you want to "see the fainter stuff out there" then a refractor is not the best tool for the job. Refractors have many fine properties and I like them very much for certain tasks but something that refractors do not do well is faint fuzzies. To see fainter stuff you need to capture more photons which requires more aperture and that means a larger SCT (which would require a substantially larger mount) or a (probably Dobsonian) reflector. How large a scope you should buy depends on how much you have to spend and also how easily you can use the telescope (it is no good having a scope that is so unwieldy that you never take it outside - unless you are going to build an observatory!). This last point also relates to how often you travel with your scope, an 8" scope under dark country skies will show more than a 12" scope in the middle of suburbia! If you can, I highly recommend going to a couple of astronomy gatherings (is their a club close to you?) and looking through a few scopes belonging to other people. That way you can get a feel for how big a 12", 16", etc, scope really is.
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