If you're looking for the best camera for astrophotography?, we've got them right here. But I've also gone a few steps further, recommending not just the cameras, but also the lenses and accessories – that will help you take incredible night-sky images.
After all, if you you want to photograph the night sky and catch celestial events like the Perseid meteor shower or the Northern Lights, you do need to prepare and you need the right kit. Astrophotography isn't a matter of point-and-pray; it's a discipline that requires precision in order to overcome factors like the short supply of light, the overabundance of artificial light, and the constant movement of the Earth.
So I've started out with some picks of the best cameras for astro shooting, then moved on some suggestions for best lenses. Naturally I can't cover all of the lenses for astro as there are so many for different systems, but these are just some ideas to get you thinking along the right lines – and besides, we have our dedicated guide to the best lenses for astrophotography. Finally, I've finished up with the tripods and other accessories, including star-trackers, filters and even mounts for deep-sky astrophotography of star clusters, nebulae and distant galaxies with astrophotography telescopes.
Jamie has been writing about all science, travel and technology for 25 years. As the editor for www.WhenIsTheNextEclipse.com, he has a wealth of enthusiasm and expertise for all things astrophotography, from capturing the Perseid Meteor Shower, lunar eclipses and ring of fire eclipses, photographing the moon and blood moon and more.
The quick list
With its full-frame sensor and incredible high-sensitivity performance, the Sony A7S III is a superb all-rounder camera for capturing astro images.
This astro-optimized mirrorless camera features an IR-cut filter, Starry Sky AF and a Night Vision mode. It's a great choice if you are only really interested in shooting astro.
With its clever sensor-shift Astrotracer feature, which makes use of the sensor-shift stabilization system, the Pentax K-1 Mark II offers a genuine USP for astrophotographers looking to capture the night sky.
This full-frame lens is the kind of thing you should be shopping for when it comes to astro, with a big aperture and a nice, wide field of view.
A tripod is essential for astrophotography – not just advised, essential. We'd say this Vanguard tripod is a good bet, not too expensive but with excellent stability.
Cutting through the emissions generated by artificial lighting, this Starscape filter enables you to capture clearer images of the night sky even if you aren't in a completely deserted area.
Best cameras for astrophotography
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Best all-rounder
This isn't a truly specialized astrophotography camera (for one of those see my next pick), but if you want a general choice that's as good at astro as it is at everything else, then I'd fully recommend the Sony A7S III.
While the resolution first appears laughably tiny, the 12.1MP sensor allows the camera to produce a quite frankly ridiculous extended ISO of 409600. I won't bore you with sensor science, but the larger pixels in the sensor mean it lets in much more light than tightly packed high-megapixel sensors, which plainly put, means it is just great in low light.
Also, weighing just 614g, this is a relatively light camera, which is handy if you're heading out to remote locations to capture your astro images. Having a 3-inch tilting touchscreen is useful for shooting from low angles, and the selection of E-mount lenses includes loads of great options for astrophotographers.
If you also want to record some video of the night sky then this camera has you well covered, with exceptional 4K video and a range of professional codecs to choose from you can produce some incredible video of your stargazing.
See our full Sony A7S III review
Best astro specialist
Astro-specialist cameras have been a pretty rare thing in recent years, but star-shooters received a delightful surprise at the beginning of 2026 when OM System took the wraps off an astro-specialized version of its popular OM-3 mirrorless Micro Four Thirds camera.
The OM System OM-3 Astro essentially takes everything that so impressed us about the OM-3 – its clever computational modes, its lightweight build, its superb image quality – and adds a bunch of tweaks and features that specifically optimize it for astro. The most significant is the dedicated IR cut filter placed in front of the sensor, which is tuned to increase Hydrogen Alpha (Hα) transmission, enabling the capture of vivid red nebulae. There are also a number of specific shooting presets for different subjects, including one for starry nightscapes.
It also boasts a dedicated Night Vision mode, bolstering the brightness of the screen to make it easier to view your composition in dark conditions. Another key feature, not specific to this camera but common across the OM System range, is Starry Sky AF. This is a genuine game-changer for astrophotography: a system that brilliantly locks onto stars and keeps them sharp. Plus, there's an in-camera stacking mode, allowing you to composite several images together, improving the signal-to-noise ratio for a cleaner image.
As the OM-3 Astro is a specialist camera, it may or may not be suitable for you. Obviously if you only want to shoot astro and nothing else, it's great – but if astro is just one of the genres that interests you, you might be better suited to one of the other cameras on this list.
Read Josh Dury's field test of the OM System OM-3 Astro
Best DSLR
Mirrorless cameras don't have it all their own way. There are still some fantastic DSLRs out there for astrophotography, one of which is the rugged, hefty Pentax K-1 Mark II. Its full-frame sensor delivers fine 36.4MP images with a good amount of detail, and the ISO can be pushed up to impressively high sensitivities. There's even an ISO 819,200 mode, but you won't use it – it's a gimmick, and the images are horrible. However, you can still get good clean results at high settings like 51,200.
The real key to the camera's appeal for our purposes, however, is the Astrotracer functionality. This uses sensor-shift technology – the kind normally used for stabilisation – to compensate for the movement of stars and produce pin-sharp points in the night sky over a long exposure, which would normally give you smears due to movement of the earth. This gives you so much more latitude to capture the night sky as it appears to the human eye, and gives the Pentax camera a real edge for astrophotographers.
This is an older DSLR, but it's still available to buy – unlike the more recent K-3 Mark III, which has been disappearing fast. There are signs brewing that it may be discontinued soon, with a K-1 Mark III potentially on the horizon. But we've had no official confirmation yet – and for now, the K-1 Mark II is still the best DSLR for astrophotography.
Read our full Pentax K-1 Mark II review
Best APS-C
While slightly outperformed by the Fujifilm X-H2S, Fujifilm's mirrorless camera comes at a more affordable price and beautiful styling.
The X-T5 is a brilliant all-rounder that's a good option for astrophotographers. While you might not get much use from the 7-stop in-body image stabilization system if you're shooting in a tripod, the clever vari-angle touchscreen will make it a breeze to compose shots in both landscape and portrait orientation.
The classic body-mounted controls on the X-T4 make it a joy to use (and that bit easier to set-up in the dark), while the image quality doesn't disappoint. The 40.2MP APS-C sensor performs very well, while there's a great choice of fast primes out there to match with the X-T5.
See our full Fujifilm X-T5 review
Best lenses for astrophotography
Here are a selection of excellent lenses available for different systems for photographing the night sky. This isn't an exhaustive list of the best lenses for astrophotography, but should get you thinking about the kinds of focal lengths that can be useful.
Best lens
Is this the best lens for astrophotography and for shooting the Milky Way? Quite possible – this super-fast wide-angle prime for full-frame mirrorless mounts is specifically optimised for getting sharp, clear images of the night sky. Its ultra-fast f/1.4 aperture allows for the use of faster shutter speeds to minimise blurring of stars, and its optical construction has been optimized to reduce sagittal coma flare, meaning that bright points of stars shouldn't take on irregular shapes, even at the edges and corners of the frame.
This is possibly the best astro lens ever made, and it's a perfect pairing with the Sony A7S III in our top spot. Those using older DSLR bodies should consider the older Sigma 14mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art.
Read our full Sigma 14mm f/1.4 DG DN Art review.
Best affordable lens
From Korean manufacturer Samyang’s XP stable of premium manual-focus prime lenses for Canon and Nikon full-frame cameras, this 14mm f/2.4 is ideal for astrophotography. The lens is sold as the Rokinon SP 14mm f/2.4 in North America. The high-quality glass is neatly wrapped in a really solid casing. The rubberized manual focus ring gives a very assured grip and has a long rotational travel with a fluid feel. There’s no weather-seal ring on the mounting plate to guard against the ingress of dust and moisture. To be fair, though, if you’re photographing the Milky Way, you’ll need clear, dry and dust-free conditions.
In our review, we were hugely impressed by how well this lens maintained its image quality when wide open, which is hugely important for astrophotography. It's markedly better than Irix's rival 15mm f/2.4 Blackstone lens or a Sigma 14mm f/1.8 DG HSM Art. Sharpness is both very good and extremely consistent across the image frame.
Best accessories for astrophotography
Even more so that other disciplines, astrophotography is hugely dependent on having the right accessories. Here is a selection of the kind of extra kit that can be useful.
Best tripod
The best choice for astrophotography and night-time landscapes is a full-size and very sturdy tripod. That's a shame, because the hobby usually requires walking off into the wilderness where equipment is at a premium, but it's nevertheless worth avoiding short travel tripods. That's particularly true if your camera doesn't have a tilting LCD screen, because you're likely to be pointing the camera upwards. However, you also can't afford for a gust of wind to ruin a long exposure photo. Weighing 2.4kg, the Vanguard Alta Pro 263AB tripod has three sections (the fewer sections, the better) and a ball head that rotates through 360 degrees. It also includes a quick-release plate and handy bubble levels.
Read more: The best tripods right now
Best star tracker mount
The rotation of the Earth means that long exposures of the night sky are limited to about 30 seconds in length before the stars start to trail across the sky. When exposures significantly longer than this are needed to capture enough light from celestial objects, it can be hard to know how to go about shooting them. The solution is a a star tracker like the Skywatcher Star Adventurer Mini, which is portable enough to take to any astro-shooting location.
What the Star Adventurer Mini does is tilt your camera to track the stars – once it's been aligned with the star Polaris, that is. This can take some practice, but is easy once you get the hang of it – we run through the basics in our practical landscape photography guide.
The Star Adventurer Mini is designed for 55mm lenses, though as we discovered in our Star Adventurer Mini review, you can use it with significantly larger and longer zooms, and still get great results. Once you link it up with your smartphone via the Wi-Fi, the tracker is easy to control, even if the app is a little buggy.
Best telescope adapter
If you do have a telescope, or you think you might have occasional access to one, a cheap T-Ring Adapter is a useful addition to your astrophotography kitbag. A standard screw mount for cameras that screws on in place of a lens, it enables a DSLR body to be attached to a telescope. The Celestron 93419 T-Ring Adapter, from telescope-maker Celestron, has a T-Ring specifically for Canon cameras, but the Celestron 93402 is also available for Nikon cameras. To attach it to a telescope means adding a T-Adapter uniquely designed for specific telescopes, which a telescope-owner will usually have.
If you just want to photograph the moon, a great alternative is to just put your camera phone up to a telescope’s eyepiece; it’s easy enough to do free-hand, but the Carson HookUpz 2.0 Universal Smartphone Optics Adapter makes it even easier.
Best light pollution filter
A light pollution filter will suppress the emissions generated by artificial lighting, reducing the yellow/greenish color caused by city lights that will stop you from capturing the night sky in all its glory. This screw-on filter is available in a range of filter thread sizes has a neat low profile, while it's compatible with both wide- and super wide-angle lenses. Perfect for shooting both nightscapes and astro photography at night.
Read more Best light pollution filters
How to choose the right kit for astrophotography
Equipping yourself with the right kit for astrophotography can seem like a complex task. That's why for this guide we have broken it down into categories by camera, lens and accessories. So, let's look at each in turn.
Camera: The best camera for astrophotography needs to conform to some quite specific requirements. It needs to be able to keep its shutter open for at least 30 seconds – likely longer – and be able to shoot in RAW format for the post-processing, which is a big part of astrophotography. A tripod mount is also a must for those long exposures. An interchangeable lens mount is also pretty much a requirement for serious astrophotography – we won't say that astro images can't be made on fixed-lens compacts, but it is significantly harder to do, because the requirements for a lens are also quite specific...
Lens: A good astrophotography lens should be wide in both aperture and angle of view. A wide aperture allows the lens to drink in plenty of light – a must when shooting the night sky – while a wide angle of view is critical for a number of reasons. Not only does it allow you to get more of the sky in the frame, but it also means you can use longer shutter speeds before stars start to 'trail', i.e. blur across the sky.
Accessories: This is more a matter of personal taste and the kinds of images you want to capture. The only accessory we'll say is absolutely essential is a tripod, as you simply aren't going to be able to use the kinds of shutter speeds required by shooting handheld. Beyond that, it's up to you – a telescope mount and telescope will make fabulous deep-sky images possible, but requires a level of technical know-how. A light-pollution filter can be handy for reducing glare from man-made light.
How we test kit for astrophotography
We test mirrorless and DSLR cameras both in real-world shooting scenarios and in carefully controlled lab conditions. Our lab tests measure resolution, dynamic range and signal to noise ratio. Resolution is measured using ISO resolution charts, dynamic range is measured using DxO Analyzer test equipment and DxO Analyzer is also used for noise analysis across the camera's ISO range. We use these real-world testing and lab results to inform our comments in buying guides.
We test lenses using both real world sample images and lab tests. Our lab tests are carried out scientifically in controlled conditions using the Imatest testing suite, which consists of custom charts and analysis software that measures resolution in line widths/picture height, a measurement widely used in lens and camera testing. We find the combination of lab and real-word testing works best, as each reveals different qualities and characteristics.
Read more:
- How to improve your astrophotography: tips, tricks and techniques
- The best telescopes for astrophotography
- The best CCD cameras for astrophotography
- The best lenses for astrophotography
- The best star tracker camera mounts
- Best head torch
