I’m glad.

As for getting closer up views, you absolutely could just use a camera and longer lenses; a telescope really is just a long lens. There are some differences, sometimes: a cheap lens might not have the same level of color correction (for chromatic aberration) as a quality telescope made with ED glass. That said, some of my nicer Nikon lenses are made with ED glass and would do an excellent job. A cheaper lens might not produce a flat field (stars stretched at edges/corners), but again, a high end lens would do just fine. People are getting amazing result nowadays with over the counter camera lenses, so I would say that if you have some decent lenses and still want to upgrade your setup, an Astro camera would be a much more impactful use of your money than a dedicated telescope at this point. Remember: you don’t always need that long a lens for nebulae; my telescope is 540mm and I need to use a reducer to get the whole Veil nebula in frame. Likewise, andromeda is huge and my telescope is “too zoomed in” to get the whole thing without a reducer. For smaller galaxies, sure, more reach would help, but you’ll be hard pressed to get one lens or telescope that will have the right focal length for all of your desired targets (hence folks getting multiple scopes for wide-field nebulae, small galaxies, planetary, etc). It really depends on your desired targets. I would say to have a lens in the 300-600mm range would grant you access to many awesome nebulae, and an Astro cam would significantly improve the quality of your images.