Astro tracking with O-GPS-1 (1 Viewer)

Clear sky, balmy weather and worries for an injured Trumpeter Swan seen earlier provoked a need to burn off some nervous energy. Moonshot is 50% crop, or 2464 x 1632 pixels @ 300 dpi, from the sensor. Then resized for forum standards.

Shot with the O-GPS-1 on a K5 and an old PK"A" 400mm F/5.6 achromat plus a PK"A" 1.4xL TC. Exposure is 60 seconds @ F/20 at 80 iso. GPS unit, once calibrated, shifts the sensor for up to about 5 minutes, to accommodate the earths rotation. First time I've played around with astro tracking, normally use the GPS data embedded in pics of banded swans, for the folks that monitor them. Perhaps try a 500mm with a 2x TC, when contrast is better as waning phase begins.

A good view of the International Space Station, and a not so good view of finicky Southern Flying Squirrels, had me out early. Squirrels are seen with unaided eye, but all together different trying to capture at night, as they scamper about like dark shadows.

Space Station had "something" preceding it. Allegedly an old piece of Alpha Centaur booster, it can be be seen in the crop as the faint streak above the bright track of the ISS. In the link below is the NASA site that will display transit data for throughout the world.

Spot the Space Station

In the 1st pic, bisected" is Jupiter(below ISS), With above, left-Castor...right-Pollux. ISS, moving from right towards left. Used with astrotracking GPS. 75 seconds @ F/6.3 at 250 iso through a 35mm focal length. (If anyone knows what the "space junk is, love to know. Higher iso might have made it brighter, likely to add noise though.) Could see what ever it is, much better than it displays in 2nd pic

The "double track" above, turns out to be the ISS Progress 53 cargo ship, parallel with the space station. Resupply vehicle docking about 14 hours after the pic was taken. Russian space agency handled this mission, with the next being done by Orbital Sciences Cygnus resupply craft. Scheduled for a December 17 launch to the space station from Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia (USA)

Clouds, snow, and a cold blast with temp hovering around 21f (-6.1c) has space shots shut down in favor of sitting in the solarium by the woodstove and having the cam set up outdoors using the focus trap mode to catch some backyard regulars. Catch in focus works great for birds, weather proofing coming in handy in winter. First is close crop of space station/progress parallel transit. A couple done with focus trap, via an old PK "K" 200mm F/2.5 & K20. Mourning dove partly vignetted the shot with the (Eur) Tree sparrow, trap wouldnt fire until sparrow enabled focus preset,