[AlexanderS]

Update: it friggin worked last night over the moon with joy! I tried with and without astrotracer to have comparisons@ 20,. 30, 60, 120 seconds each, was standing without a jacket in the cold to not have any metal on me for sure. In the end I just tried more and more, ended up at 5 minutes@18mm without problems at all, and even with the camera pointing 80 degrees up into the sky.
I already tried yesterday to identify the culprit, it seems that doing the calibration too quickly (even only by a bit) has the biggest chances of messing it up. I will continue testing, so I can say as surely as possible, what the problem was, and also so I have a fail-proof approach for every timeI will use it.
Might post pics later, but they are nothing great, anyways, only a light polluted load of shots, after all.
Thanks again everyone, your inputs really have me something to think about while planning the shots and identifying possible probs, and it's wonderful to see an active community with people providing civilized comments and input without being condescending.
When I decided for pentax after Canon and Sony,I was a little worried because with the former, there is just more people around who have their cameras, and can help you in case of problems, than with pentax. But this forum is more than enough, after digging thoroughly through it

[AlexanderS]

Update: it friggin worked last night over the moon with joy! I tried with and without astrotracer to have comparisons@ 20,. 30, 60, 120 seconds each, was standing without a jacket in the cold to not have any metal on me for sure. In the end I just tried more and more, ended up at 5 minutes@18mm without problems at all, and even with the camera pointing 80 degrees up into the sky.
I already tried yesterday to identify the culprit, it seems that doing the calibration too quickly (even only by a bit) has the biggest chances of messing it up. I will continue testing, so I can say as surely as possible, what the problem was, and also so I have a fail-proof approach for every timeI will use it.
Might post pics later, but they are nothing great, anyways, only a light polluted load of shots, after all.
Thanks again everyone, your inputs really have me something to think about while planning the shots and identifying possible probs, and it's wonderful to see an active community with people providing civilized comments and input without being condescending.
When I decided for pentax after Canon and Sony,I was a little worried because with the former, there is just more people around who have their cameras, and can help you in case of problems, than with pentax. But this forum is more than enough, after digging thoroughly through it

So, here are the shots, the picture straight up @90 seconds, and the 5 minutes shot. You can already see the edges trailing out slightly, but the large part of the picture is just fine. Although I have not touched it, the focus shifted ever so slightly, but on all of my pictures, I cannot see any trails with the opgs1, so that does not matter at this time. Further testing will be conducted, also with my pentax 70 limited, that should arrive by Friday in the mail

[DrawsACircle]

These are all pictures taken using the Astrotracer/GPS (and my K-70), the Whirlpool Galaxy was at a 70-80˚ angle.
One 20sec exposure, 300mm (PLM version)



36x10sec, 300mm (DA*)


200mm (M200), can’t remember the number of exposures.


So hang in there, from your last post it seems as if you are headed in the right direction

[k5astro]

This is good news! Maybe I'll give astrotracer another try on my K-3II


PS: Theres an astrophotography group here you might want to join.

[AlexanderS]

These are all pictures taken using the Astrotracer/GPS (and my K-70), the Whirlpool Galaxy was at a 70-80˚ angle.
One 20sec exposure, 300mm (PLM version)



36x10sec, 300mm (DA*)


200mm (M200), can’t remember the number of exposures.


So hang in there, from your last post it seems as if you are headed in the right direction

Hey,
these shots are great, and that would be my goal at some point. Can you tell me more about the process towards them, e.g. how do you align your camera to shot at the right spot in the night sky, software/app you are using, setup in general? Thanks in advance for your answer on those!

Also, just realized you are from Denmark, I wanted to go to the Thy National Park, are there camping shelters around, and if yes, do you need to book them? Mainly want to go there for bird shots, but also to escape the cancerous Copenhagen light pollution that is easily seen even on my test shots at iso100.

[DrawsACircle]

Unfortunately, the Orion Constellation is not visible to us until October/November. If you ask me, it's the best when it comes to learning how to do Astrophotography, it's easy to find and the nebula is visible to the naked eye when you are at a dark spot.

It's a lot of trial and error, I use the SkyView app on my iPhone to locate the object I want to shoot. Point the camera at a nearby star, that is quite a challenge using a 300mm lens, especially when you cannot see the object which is the case with the Whirlpool galaxy.
Do a test with high ISO, this makes it easier to see the nebula/galaxy, Adjust until you have it almost centered in the picture. Notice the location of the visible stars on the liveview screen once you have the object where you want it.
Now you are ready to go, lower the ISO to 800-1600 or whatever fits the exposure time, shoot 5-10 frames and readjust so the visible stars are close to when you took the first Picture, then you are sure to have the object in the frame. repeat until you have your planned exposure time.
I suggest you take 5-10 pictures (10-15 minutes) and do some post processing on those. If everything goes wrong, you haven't spent a whole night with no result (that will eventually happen )

Use Deep Sky Stacker to stack you pictures, you can download it for free, use Photoshop or Lightroom for the processing. There are tons of how-to guides on Youtube.

National Park Thy, that's just 150km north of where i live , you can find an overview of shelters/camp sites here:
Oplev Nationalpark Thy} When I need a dark spot I go to Husby Klit Plantage, It's dark as a dungeon, just have to beware of the wolfes in the area ;-)

If you need some relatively dark skies in the Copenhagen area, you could take bus #33 to Sydvestpynten


As suggested by gbeaton, visit/join the Astrophotography group on PF: Astrophotography - PentaxForums.com

[AlexanderS]

Last entry to this discussion: I tried yesterday again, it works perfectly well.

I am now almost 100% certain of these two reasons to be the main possible problem factors, so anyone else with the same issues, make sure:
1. DO NOT make the calibration too quickly! My issues came almost certainly from that, at least after testing several times, ejecting batteries, moving around to try and repeat processes.
2. If there is a lot of metal around, it might have an effect. I had one blurred shot on my balcony, with a lot of metal around, but one went well, so maybe keeping more than a meter away from a metal factory should be good enough!

Also tested: I shot 90 degreen straight up into the sky, 2 minutes 40 seconds for an attempt, worked perfectly fine!

And again, thanks to all of you for your help, I really had a great first forum experience!

[DrawsACircle]

Great to have more Pentax users doing Astrophotography
I also suspect mobilephones to interfere with the calibration, it's not based on a proper root cause analysis, just what I've noticed while calibrating.
But, beware - it's a path covered with temptations, temptations I recently gave in to .:




It paid off Friday Night:



Clear Skies

[AlexanderS]

Great to have more Pentax users doing Astrophotography
I also suspect mobilephones to interfere with the calibration, it's not based on a proper root cause analysis, just what I've noticed while calibrating.
But, beware - it's a path covered with temptations, temptations I recently gave in to .:




It paid off Friday Night:



Clear Skies

Looks awesome, but I got Pentax partially also for the small gear factor in terms of IQ (limited lenses, etc.) and this would be way too much work for me, plus the lugging. Keep enjoying it, though, always nice to see such shots!