Sony a6000 for astrophotography

[LtChestnut]

I was originally going to buy a cannon 800D for astrophotography, however a friend of mine recommended sonys mirrorless series because they were newer and had better lense support etc. Looking around, I found very well priced used a6000. How good are these cameras for astrophotography? Im looking to use it with a star tracking mount and a redcat 51, or similar small APO refractor. I want to focus on nebula and star clusters, not planetary. I also want to use this camera outside of Astro, but Astro is the priority. Are mirrorless cameras different compared to DLSRs when it comes to Astros? And if its not a great camera for Astros, could you recommend one that would surfice in both widefield astros and normal day-today use thats around the same used price as the a6000.

It had a CMOS APS-C sensor at 6000x4000 (24.3MPixles), with a pixle pitch of 3.92 microns.

Full spec sheet here - https://www.imaging-resource.com/PRODS/sony-a6000/sony-a6000DAT.HTM

Thanks for the help advance - clear skies

[casstony]

The Nikon D5600 is an excellent, low noise camera for astro use and has the same chip specs (maybe the same chip). The Sony may be as good but I'm not familiar with it. The D5600 is also fairly easy to modify if you decide to in future.

[gregbradley]

A6000 is a good all round camera. The main advantages of mirrorless over DSLR for astro are the EVF, smallness and lightness and in the case of the A6000 is very cheap.

Nikon D5600 may be fine. I did read about one similar model, it may have been the D5700 that does some funky filtering of RAW images resulting in off star colours. D5600 may be fine but the images I see often that are outstanding are from a modified D5300.

A6000 as you know is an older model and is a little noisy compared to more modern models. But if you stack images, which you need to do anyway, this noise goes away.

For a star tracker you need lightness. I have a Redcat 51 and its an excellent lens/telescope. It might be asking a lot though to get a tracker to mount it. If everything is perfectly aligned and balanced it might.

It would need the counterweight kit that most trackers offer these days.

Greg.

[casstony]

The Nikon D5300, 5500 and 5600 are all very similar and all recommended for astro. The 5500 and 5600 are a touch easier to modify if an owner is interested in tackling that.

I think it's the 5200 that wasn't recommended as it didn't have a sony chip and was noisy.

[truss]

I'm considering a mirrorless camera for AP, the 7D is a heavy beast and noise above ISO3200 is an issue.

[sunslayr]

I would not recommend an a6000 for more than casual AP due to its lack of software support. Things like plate solving are made a lot more annoying when you have to use a macro with Sony's proprietary camera control software. If you are willing to tinker though you can still get some nice results (https://www.photobox.co.uk/my/photo?album_id=5731247686&photo_id=502253614707).