Televue Pronto vs. Stellarvue SV78S

Hello,

This is my first time posting a messege on this forum. I am looking for a nice refractor to put ontop of my 8" LX200GPS. I am in need of a scope that can give nice wide field views, and can also act as a premium telephoto lens and a guidescope for when I shoot through the LX200. I have my Superwedge and everything else to go for astrohphography except the guidescope. I have got good results with short 3 or 4 minute exposures of deep space objects, but that puts a large deficit on what I can photograph until I get a seperate guidescope. Seeing as I am only 17, I dont have $2000 to spend on a Televue 85 (which would probably be optimal for my purposes). I can only spend around 600 to 700 dollars.

This brings me to my question. I am looking for opinions on either the Televue Pronto or the StellarVue SV78S. They are close in aperture, but the Stellarvue beats the Televue on focal length. I am a little torn between the two. I dont know if maybe its an even better idea to save up a little more for a TV-76 used. Does anyone have an opinion on this? I need to decide pretty soon because summer is approaching and I would like to get out and take some astrophotos while the weather is nice (and while I'm not overrun by school work), so any opinions or suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I know that some opinions on this will be biased towards the Televue seeing as this is the Televue forum, but sill, opinions of pros and cons of these scope would be greatly appreciated.

Clear Skies,
Taylor

Taylor,

From what I understand, if you use an autoguider the focal length becomes less of an issue than if you manually guide. I have a Pronto sitting on my 8" LX200 classic, and have a used ST-4 autoguider on the way. I'm expecting decent results. I'm on a Milburn wedge. The LX handles the weight of this setup very well.

As a widefield scope (and shooting wide-field photography through the scope), the Pronto is wonderful. There is purple fringing to deal with (I just received a minus violet filter to handle that, haven't tried it yet), and there's coma (I believe it's coma) near the edges of the field (I ordered the Televue field flattener to solve this, it's on the way).

You can see the purple fringing and coma issues in this image, taken through the Pronto while piggybacked on the LX200:
http://www.macnmotion.com/d60astro/m81m82pronto.html

As you might have guessed, I can't comment on the SV78S. Good luck with your imaging.

Andy