[mikeSF]

Wow! That's really nice. Is this one exposure or several? That milky way looks great.

thanks. its a 7-frame pano, 2-minute exposures. foreground lightpainted with my headlamp. the reflections in front are from the boat

[SunValley]

@interested_observer About finding your way around the stars just make sure your planetarium program has a night mode which turns the screen to black and red so you don't lose your night vision. I usually just bring printouts from Cartes du Ciel in the field and use 'Astronomical Flashlight Free' on my Android phone to look at them.

Pointing a 300 mm lens in the dark will indeed be a challenge. Your night vision will have to be perfect (Allow your eyes to adapt for a good 20 min in the dark). Turn off the lcd screen on the camera, turn off the blue light of the o-gps1 unit (from the astrotracer menu). That way I easily see stars up to magnitude 4 through the viewfinder of my K-30 with my 200 mm f4. To center a star in the viewfinder I use the 'both eyes opened' technique. I move the camera to try to center the star I see with my left eye with the viewfinder's rectangle I see with my right. As the star approches the center of the rectangle sure enough it appears in the viewfinder.

Clear skies!

[mikeSF]

great tips, SunValley!

here is a pano from Saturday up in Sonoma County:

Starry Night

K5, DA15, O-GPS1
with story on flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/mikeoria/14277689371/

[interested_observer]

@interested_observer About finding your way around the stars just make sure your planetarium program has a night mode which turns the screen to black and red so you don't lose your night vision. I usually just bring printouts from Cartes du Ciel in the field and use 'Astronomical Flashlight Free' on my Android phone to look at them.

Pointing a 300 mm lens in the dark will indeed be a challenge. Your night vision will have to be perfect (Allow your eyes to adapt for a good 20 min in the dark). Turn off the lcd screen on the camera, turn off the blue light of the o-gps1 unit (from the astrotracer menu). That way I easily see stars up to magnitude 4 through the viewfinder of my K-30 with my 200 mm f4. To center a star in the viewfinder I use the 'both eyes opened' technique. I move the camera to try to center the star I see with my left eye with the viewfinder's rectangle I see with my right. As the star approches the center of the rectangle sure enough it appears in the viewfinder.

Clear skies!

Thanks for the excellent suggestions! I went out shooting Sunday night. I ran into the blue LED, but did not know that it could be turned off. I had thought about turning off the rear screen, but how would I turn enable Astrotracking - so I just lived with it. I need to read the manual some more. I did manage to capture some reasonable shots. I learned a lot. I did not experiment as much as I should have. I did not know exactly what my take was really going to look like. I should have tried out a lot more than what I did. I posted on the first run here. Stone has been offering a number of very helpful suggestions, too. Been using my red light,however I need a headlamp - too few hands.

Its going to take a while to get up to the 300. That one is a ways away. Just concentrating with the Milky Way - and post processing.

great tips, SunValley!

here is a pano from Saturday up in Sonoma County:

Starry Night

K5, DA15, O-GPS1
with story on flickr:

WOW, just Spectacular!!!! I have a lot of learning ahead of me.....

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Last edited by interested_observer; 05-27-2014 at 08:44 PM.

[SunValley]

@interested_observer Last winter I started working on a tutorial about the o-gps1. Though it is still "under construction" you may find useful info at; O-GPS1Basics
Because once you set the astrotracer in b mode the only time you need to go back to the menu is when you do precise calibration. Everything else can be operated with the front e-dial, the release button and the green button.

@mikeSF The colors, details, brightness of the Milky Way are just amazing. Thanks for sharing.

[sindbad1]

Here is a German article about the astrotracer.

Pentax Astrotacer - round stars with long exposuretimes

The images on that page are interesting. You can see a tripod-head with a finder scope attached. This is nice, because it is not easy to aim the camera with longer focal distances ont the objects you want to photograph.




Tom

[SunValley]

Here is a German article about the astrotracer.

Holy!!! the astrotracer with a SkyWatcher 80 ED telescope (600 mm f.l.). Not a bad 30s shot of M57!