>>4280700Technically that's a maksutov-cassegrain telescope. They can be much larger, and therefore brighter. And of course they can resolve much better than the cheap ones sold as "lenses". However, most photographers of celestial subjects prefer to use refractor telescopes, which are just lenses with fixed apertures (eg Takahashi).
Telescopes can be used as lenses, but you will have to use ND filters, at times, because you can't stop down.
The biggest problem with telescopes is nobody reviews them for imaging terrestrial subjects, or at least too few do, and too poorly (people into the stars suck at regular photography, invariably, somehow). So it's just a matter of luck, because performance on stars just can't tell you how a telescope will perform in real photography.
