I joined the Astronomical Society of Tasmania for a night of astrophotography under the stars last weekend. The venue was the University of Tasmania’s radio telescope at Mt Pleasant in Cambridge, and while we didn’t have access to that, many of the societies members had their own telescopes and were busy viewing and photographing the planets, and deep sky objects such as nebula and star clusters.

I took my ol’ Pentax K1 out of mothballs to give the astrotracer a run. I hadn’t used it in a long time, and thought I’d attach the big and heavy 15-450mm and shoot some deeper sky objects. I mostly shot in the direction of Orion which is very prominent in the night sky now. I also shot Eta Carinae, a nebula in the Milky Way not far from the Southern Cross which is of course always visible in our Southern skies.

Here are some of the results and settings.

These are all single exposures using very high ISO and the tracking feature of the Pentax astrotracer. To achieve some of the really stunning deep sky astrophotography you might see online requires multiple exposures – dozens even – each one of 5 minutes or more, captured in the field over many hours then stacked in software.

The Pentax allows up to 1 minute or so at long focal lengths eg 200mm or longer so its not a bad starting point. It’s worked well for me over the years, including these shots and comets too so for now it will do for me 🙂

Heads up too – speaking of comets – there’s an opportunity to shoot Comet PanSTARRS (C/2025 R3) later in April. In fact I’ll be making sure my Tarkine Photography Workshop group gets a chance to see it!