[Vortex]

Well to start off I don't have much experience with astronomy. I had an 8" Tasco reflector for about 10 years but I could never get the damn thing to balance to align it no matter what I did so I only ever really looked at the moon.

Anyway i'm more of a photographer been into that for a while and love taking photos of the moon and star trails. One day decided even though I couldn't track i'd stick my SLR (now a DSLR) onto it and take some photos which worked pretty well considering there was no tracking and how relatively short the exposure had to be so there wasn't any blurring.

Anyway the mirror at the back got knocked or something and I could never get anymore sharp pictures and the thing ended up being forgotten about.

Now I wish to get back into the astro-photography side of things so am looking for a scope.

Primarily i'll be using my Nikon D70 for photos of the moon and planets but would also like to try deep space objects or something.

The past few years i've been looking at the predecessors to the above 2 goto scopes as well as all I could find on the current models.

From what I gather they still arn't that good for long exposure astro-photography as they both seem to have tracking problems over 30 - 60s which ppl seem to account to the extra weight of the camera.

So i'd just like to know with the photos I want to take if either of these 2 would be worth purchasing and which one is the better one. Of course i'll be using it to view as well but my primary focus will be on photography with it.

Even without using tracking both would give me bigger and better pictures of the moon then my 300mm Sigma lens but I would very much like to also use the tracking and gets the planets as well as some nebulae or star clusters etc.

So would these just be a waste of money or worth getting?