preliminary imaging tests with the Canon 20Da camera

This evening I performed some very preliminary imaging tests using the Canon EOS 20Da Red/almost-near-IR sensitive camera.  I was using a Canon EF 200mm f/2.8L II USM lens with a B+W 72mm Infracolor Orange-to-IR Filter, a filter blocks light above 520nm and fully lets in light from 600nm well into the near IR (beyond 1000 nm).  Early results were encouraging.

At ISO 200 f/2.8 at 10 second without a clock drive, I was able to image stars to +10.0 magnitude during twilight conditions.  This is good news as one needs to image deeper than 8th magnitude in order to search objects that the SOHO (see FAQ 3.7), so this is a good sign.  Here the belt of Orion (shrunk by a factor to 10 to speed up the download time) that was taken:

I plan to next perform a zenithi test (see FAQ 3.4) when the same camera setup on a clock driven mount.  I will report on the result of this test when I have selected by clock driven mount.