Pentax K1 Milky Way...

[cybereye]

Hi all... remember me?

I've had my new Pentax K1 for about 10 days and last week I put its Astrotracer function through its paces from my backyard in Brisbane. For those that might not be aware, the Pentax K1 can shift its sensor to follow the night sky using the on board GPS.

The attached image is 10x90 second images, stacked in Deep Sky Stacker and processed in Startools and Lightroom. The lens was a 35mm prime, ISO1600 and F5.6. The camera was mounted on a normal camera tripod and I had the usual inner-city light pollution issues.

I've also included a crop of the Southern Cross from one of the raw images and then the same image taken without the Astrotracer function. This will give you an idea of how well the Pentax K1 Astrotracer function worked. They also give you an idea of the light pollution...

Cheers,
Mario

[strongmanmike]

Ciao Mario, welcome back :hi:

What a cool camera, sounds like it will make wide field camera lens imaging a bit of a breeze and that Southern cross comparison makes its capabilities pretty obvious.

Mike

[gregbradley]

Great to see the K1 in action. Those blurry curved corners are they because the sensor runs out of room to move to if the exposure is too long? Or is the 35mm lens got some corner aberrations?

It would be great to get that camera out to a dark site. It looks very promising.

Greg.

[Atmos]

Certainly an interesting camera! Does a brilliant tracking job. Amazing what you can draw out of all that light pollution.

[cybereye]

Thanks Mike - it's been a while since I've been out and imaged! This isn't Pentax's first Astrotracer camera. My K30 had the capability but required that I bought a separate GPS unit for about $300 - a bit hard to justify! The K1 is Pentax's first full frame camera and is a great little unit - especially in low light.



Greg, I too noticed the corners were a bit odd so went trying to find a reason. The individual frames do not show anything unusual but I did note some unusual stacking artifacts that I needed to address. The lens that I used is a smc Pentax DA 35mm lens which was designed for use on a APS-C sensor. It seems to work OK on the full frame K1 but I'm wondering if there is some slight distortion at the edges. As the K1 is only moving the sensor during imaging, the field of view differs between the contributing images. I'm thinking Deep Sky Stacker is having trouble with the edges because of this possible edge distortion...


Colin, I'm very happy with the K1 and I too was amazed at what I could drag out of the Brisbane night sky! I liked the detail and was surprised at the sheer number of stars in the field of view - amazing!

Cheers,
Mario

[IanP]

A very interesting camera, indeed ... would be good to learn its Ha response .. :hi:

[cybereye]

Ian, I think the Ha response would be the same as any DSLR. What I think would be interesting is a GPS module that you could place on your mount to auto-align it. How much time would you save?!!! The technology is obviously there...

Cheers,
Mario

[Ross G]

Hello Mario,

Welcome back.

That's a nice photo and a very interesting camera.

Does it also do 2x2 binning in the camera?

Ross.

[cybereye]

Ross, the Pentax K1 is just a normal full frame DSLR and as such doesn't do 2x2 binning.

Cheers,
Mario