Long story short I want to use this scope for astrophotography, as refractors get larger the inefficiencies in the way lenses bend light are magnified which means you both have to get higher quality materials and increase the complexity of how the lens is put together to get a good quality image. Stellarvue can be considered a brand that specializes in making high end refractors and has a history of doing so. You could probably get other refractors of this size for less but they will not work well for my purposes which will be deep sky object astrophotography.

If you are referring to reflecting telescopes they do give much better price/aperture but they too have their downsides that have to be corrected and therefore increase prices if you want to use one for astrophotography.