Something to consider down the road. Some of the sharpest, most vivid
deep-space astrophotography I've seen has been achieved via modest
aperture refractors.

Most of those "modest aperture refractors" by themselves probably cost more
than a 11 or 12 inch SCT complete with GOTO and the mount might well have cost
as much or even more.....

If you want to build a scope, I think a Newtonian is the way to go, Edmunds is
not the place to buy. In either case. One can buy a simple Chinese Achromat
for less than it would cost to build the same thing, optically these are as
good as one will probably get. One can by an APO objective from someone like
TMB but it is not a cheap thing....

Sitll wondering if you have looked at the Nextstar 11 GPS in person, sometimes
those nice catalogs and webpages do convey size very well.

jon