600d - Any good?

[AstroJOE]

I've just bought myself a Canon 600d which ill mainly be using for day to day family use but I'd also like to use it for some DSO photography via my C11.

Anyone able to give any tips or opinions on It's suitability for the latter?

James

[Daniel-K]

well my friend has just bought one of these and its alot more senestive to the red than my 450d the noise is slightly better on the 600D aswell so id day your onto a winner

[Chris]

Hi, it will work of course, the only down side with a camera with so many mega pixels is that the sensitivity will be less than say a 450D or 1100D and the file size for processing will be quite large also. But it will work and Canons have excellent software for Astro in the form of Backyard EOS which enables you to control many useful things from your PC.

I've inputed your scope and camera into a program call 12Dstring which can tell you how many arc seconds resolution different scope/camera combo's produce and your combo gives 0.3 arc seconds which is tiny. The atmosphere won't let you resolve any better than around 1.5-2 arc seconds so any finer resolution in your setup is unfortunately wasted.

A scope with a shorter focal length will give you better performance with this camera and will also track with the Earths rotation more easily (which is one of the most important things with Astrophotography).

My advice would be keep the camera and get yourself a short focal lengh and fast F/ration scope on an EQ tracking mount, The C11 on an ALt/az is not best suited for DSO although it would be Kick bottom at planetary!

hth

Chris