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You would need 10 inch aperture to see most galaxies and even then they are usually just faint blotches. There are a few that are bright enought to see some detail. Centarus A, M31 if you can see low enough to the north, NGC253 the Sculptor Galaxy and a few others. Really what you see visually are nebula, star clusters, globular clusters and planets/moon. You won't see galaxies like they are shown in astrophotos as those photos are several hours long using highly sensitive cameras to get it in perspective. You won't see colour either.
Perhaps a slight tinge on the brightest nebula and colour in Jupiter and Saturn. You will see colour in some stars.
Go-to capability is priceless as these objects are quite small and unless you know your way around the sky I'd say you would get frustrated trying to find things.
So that limits it really to your Meade/Celestron SCTs.
Refractors are great but unless your thing is widefield star views (which are nice for about 10 minutes then you're bored) you won't be seeing too many of the above unless you are up around the 6 inch aperture range. Price is high for the high quality refractors and position to view is often uncomfortable.
Newts are good but short focal length so that makes it hard. Now you need a barlow and they are fussier and harder to collimate. Great for imaging machines with the right setup though.
Dobs are great for large aperture and you can get them with navigation devices to be able to locate objects and even track with them. If the ultimate in visual is your thing then a dob with the extras is the go.
Price wise I think you would be getting up there by the time you add the niceties.
So Meade/Celestron SCTs are fairly untouchable bang for buck for visual/portability/ functionality/quality in my opinion. This is the area where they excel. Also used for planetary imaging and are excellent for that.
Celestron with its fastar system opens the door for quite good astrophotography and fairly economically. Then if you like it you advance to more expensive and different types of setups - typically a german equatorial mount and a Newt or refractor etc.
The new Meade system which doubles as either an alt/az mount or german equatorial mount (new and I haven't seen any reviews yet) sounds clever and has an road up already in place should you want to do imaging.
Greg.
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