60Da for Astrophotography - who has it and what are your opinions on pros and cons?

After this most recent lunar eclipse last night, I actually became very interested I attaching a camera body to a telescope and photographing astronomy objects.

Canon makes a specialized 60D camera for a very good price called the 60Da. I am considering buying this as a specialized tool (like my 65mm Macro lens) to use for poster sized prints that I can produce after I stack shots taken with this body.

My question is what are the advantages in actual astrophotography or disadvantages of non-astrophotography of owning this body? Who has it, and what improvements did you notice in your shots taken with the (a) version of a camera body over a non-(a) version? I see in reviews some people are claiming fairly major improvements in their astrophotography after switching to this body. Are modified bodies better performers?

As a side note - I notice that it's infrared sensitive. So maybe it'll have an alternative use as an infrared camera too with the right filters?

catclaw wrote in post #16837591
After this most recent lunar eclipse last night, I actually became very interested I attaching a camera body to a telescope and photographing astronomy objects.

Canon makes a specialized 60D camera for a very good price called the 60Da. I am considering buying this as a specialized tool (like my 65mm Macro lens) to use for poster sized prints that I can produce after I stack shots taken with this body.

My question is what are the advantages in actual astrophotography or disadvantages of non-astrophotography of owning this body? Who has it, and what improvements did you notice in your shots taken with the (a) version of a camera body over a non-(a) version? I see in reviews some people are claiming fairly major improvements in their astrophotography after switching to this body. Are modified bodies better performers?

As a side note - I notice that it's infrared sensitive. So maybe it'll have an alternative use as an infrared camera too with the right filters?

You will get mix opinion on this camera. One of the major issue is the fact that it remains an one shot color camera. The bayer matrix interpolation will inherently add noise for long exposure. So you will still need to shoot dark and flats to get rid of it all. Its is more sensitive to H-alpha light but not as a much as an CCD monochrome camera. Don't forget the red(h-alpha spectrum) is still only 25% of the bayer matrix.

Take it for what it is. Its not a bad camera but still very far from what a cooled color or monochrome CCD camera can do.

fyi, you can get some very good shots with a regular old body. You may want to experiment with a standard body before you invest in a specialized body.

I would think that to take advantage of the extra sensitivity you would want access to a very dark site. If you're having to deal with light pollution, it's probably not worth it.

How familiar are you with astrophotography and what is required to get those really stunning images that you see? (except for the moon and wide angle shots of the Milky Way or star trails) You may already know, but it's much more involved than just connecting a camera body to a telescope.

You'll need a good GEM mounted telescope with motorized tracking. The mount alone will probably run you at least several hundred dollars. Then I think most folks will also use a tracking camera to compensate for the error in the tracking motor. Then you'll want to take hours of exposure usually by taking many short exposures and stacking them together. Then the post-processing is another matter entirely.