Attention to all “owls” just kidding, to all astrophotographers to contemplate the galaxies: Canon has released a new camera, specially designed for capture night sky images. Astrophotographers and those who want to take pictures of the deep night sky will now have their own special full-frame mirrorless camera: Canon EOS Ra.

The EOS Ra extends the popular EOS R line and was created to capture the subtleties and details of the night sky, from the smallest star to the beautiful Milky Way. Most modern cameras are not originally intended for shooting the night sky. Users have to modify them by adding infrared filters and special highly sensitive sensors. This is helping to capture high-precision images of the deep-red wavelengths emitted by nebulae in vivid color, without any special camera alterations.

The two main problems of astrophotography are focusing on and color preservation. EOS Ra addresses these two challenges by offering a 30x maximum magnification in Live View shooting mode so photographers can focus precisely on even the smallest stars. This new Canon mirrorless camera was also built with a modified filter, such as four times greater transmittance of hydrogen-alpha (Hα) light of 656.3 nm compared to the original EOS R.

The Canon EOS Ra comes with a full-frame 30.3MP CMOS sensor and Digic 8 image processor. This allows you to get brighter dark red shades of nebulae and gives incredible results when shooting galaxies and the Milky Way. All this makes the EOS Ra the perfect astrophotography camera.

It also has the possibility of 4K interval shooting, combined with high ISO performance, you can be sure that you capture beautiful nighttime intervals of stars moving across the sky, recorded with beautiful clarity and detail. And thanks to the bright touch-sensitive LCD display with a variable viewing angle, photographers will be able to create and crop pictures from any angle to get the most unique perspective.

In addition to the night focusing features, the new Canon mirrorless camera was equipped with the same Dual Pixel CMOS autofocus system as the EOS R, making it fast and accurate in the field.

EOS Ra also has a built-in 3.69 million-dot electronic viewfinder (EVF), similar to EOS R, which allows you to accurately focus the night sky even without using the 30x Live View with high magnification. And, of course, EOS Ra is built in the same lightweight, compact and robust housing as the EOS R series, making EOS Ra a reliable companion for astrophotographers, no matter where they shoot.

Price and Availability

Canon EOS Ra full-frame mirrorless camera is already listed on Bhphotovideo.com, pre-order starts from November 19th and is scheduled to be available in mid-December 2019 for an estimated retail price of $2,499.00 for the body only.