Telescopes like cars, can be any price. Years ago , i had a Questar 7 inch Maksutov just about the top of the line for a 7inch.
It cost around 12.000 dollars, and i did astrophotography. this was pre digital , I had a cold camera and a Pentax ME super on the back of the scope. the cold camera was used with dry ice to chill the emulsion down to make it more sensitive to light. did 2 hour long exposures of extended objects like Galaxy's and Gaseous nebula. Now it's all done with a digital camera. I gave up taking pic.s because i no longer could produce pictures that could compete with what the Hubble could do. and because i liked visual astronomy better. here you are sitting in your backyard looking at the Andromeda galaxy, it's 2.5 million light years away. as soon as that light hits your eye, it has been traveling for 2.5 million years.
And as your thinking, most people think that the Photons are pulsed like a strobe, wrong! they make a solid line of photons between you and Andromeda. Scientists are looking for the missing mass in the universe. they say Photons have no mass. I think this is wrong photons have a small mass, therefore i believe that is where the missing components of our universe, PHOTONS make up the missing mass. think about just one sun, any sun, it is emitting Photons in every conceivable direction all the time. each string of photons is a solid line between point a to point b .
Forget dark matter and dark energy. PHOTONS IS WHERE IT'S AT!
@DeanOnAuto . are you in a city? how is your sky? light polluted?