O-GPS1 Astrotracer function is phenomenal!

Good tip Matt, does a great job, I just tried it. Thanks

There you go:

I sorted out the light pollution problem here by removing the bulb from the pointlessly installed streetlamp next to our house. And then five times more after it was repaired five times. They eventually got the message and I got a good collection of rather big lightbulbs.
Night skies here are as clear as you like so looking forward to seeing how the astrotracer performs before my return to the dreaded orange glow.

Thanks MattMatic for sharing this trick with us. I will try it for sure.

Here's a link to a post I made last summer in pentaxforums about correcting sky glow with iris freeware. Iris works good but as is with all freeware there are some inevitable bugs sometimes.

I had to have a go with it




FA*24mm f4 120s iso1000

Then, maybe, you could leave it with me for safekeeping?

I might still get holidays. I just might use the GPS too for a little project I'm thinking of.

Very nice skies tonight, I was going to get the crescent Moon with earthshine against the blue sky but it got too dark before I had time to set up the telescope, so instead here's Venus with the DA*300. ISO12800 so very noisy but I wanted to show the wispy clouds too and limit trails. I thought it quite pretty. Roll on astrotracer:

That's canny. It's foggy here!

Wow, that's quite a trip there. Glad to see you included the off the beaten track locations such as the West Coast of the South Island. That can be a pretty raw untouched beauty that is missed at times.

Had a go at this last night but it didn't perform too well, trails showing on a 2:30 exposure (max was 5:00). Not too surprising and it was all a bit of a hurry as I didn't get started till late because of a parent's evening. I read somewhere the trail-less keeper rate was around 40%. Does make me consider a faster wide angle lens though

nass, not sure what my keeper rate is, but it's not massively high - a bit like my photography in general!

What helped me somewhat was to update my firmware. Then I do the simple calibration before moving onto the precise calibration in the astrotracer menu. This seems to get better results for me even if I'm still fumbling around in the dark, twisting and turning the camera round on all axes for what seems an eternity, in the hope the calibration complete screen comes up!

I'd be interested in what cycler and DrOrloff - liking the images guys -suggest for exposure times with longer focal lengths. I've not had much luck at all with the longer lengths.

Glad to see you succumbed Lenny!!

Rich, New Zealand really is a walkers paradise and I also ended up on a good few metal/gravel roads on that trip- it sure is the wild west down there weatherwise! I must fill in some gps gaps manually as smeggy suggests, it's quite therapeutic retracing your steps.

I'm interested in the suggestions relating to longer focal lengths too - my next attempts will be with a 300mm after a bit more research!

Thanks for encouraging me to spend my money garnetgarnet

For 300mm without astrotracer then I think 1.5 seconds is about the maximum I would shoot. I shall let you know the with astrotracer times in the New Year.

Saturday night cleared up pretty good and once the moon had set I tried my hand at another shoot. This is Orion's nebula. Stack of six 40 s images with 135 mm f/2.8 at f/4.0. Click on the image for a bigger picture. Tracking is not as good as the Pleiades shot.




O-GPS1 has been working for more than six hours now and the battery is still almost full charge even though temperatures have been around -8 Celcius the entire time.

Own up. Who bought them all. I'm on a waiting list