okay, wasnt exactly love at first sight, but I just knew it was the one when I saw it in the flesh. After months of fairly painstaking research and chunking wades of specification (my usual process with buying anything), I decided on a budget and went for it during a trip to London.  This beauty in the picture is the ETX 125 PE (Premier Edition) which I am the proud owner of.

ETX is a range of scopes by Meade, (ETX apparently stands for everyones telescope, which I wish Id never known, doesnt sound as sexy now) the 125 denotes the 125mm objective lens (5 inches). It has a focal length of 1900mm
due to its Maksutov-Cassegrain configuration (combination of refraction / reflection). As a direct comparison, my telephoto lens is 300mm.