K100D vs Blue K-30 -- Church of the Good Shepherd, Lake Tekapo, New Zealand

I recently (13/12/2012) took the fantastic Mt John Night-time Observatory Tour and met another Pentax user from the UK with a blue K-30 and an astro-tracer unit.

We've met again on the same night at the Church of the Good Shepherd to take some more shots of the marvelous night sky over Lake Tekapo in New Zealand.

Here are my humble shots of the church:

(visit image at Flickr).

You can see the Southern Cross in the above shot; I've marked it for easier identification in the following:

(visit image at Flickr).

Also highlighted are the two "pointers" -- Alpha Centauri (4.3 light-years away) and Beta Centauri (350 light-years away) -- that help to find the Southern Cross in the night sky. Southern Hemisphere only, though, sorry.

Turning around a 180°, we could see Jupiter as a bright object over Lake Tekapo.

(visit image at Flickr).

Thanks to Dallas Poll for setting up an equatorial mount and allowing us to use it with our cameras. Here's the Orion Nebula, shot with a Pentax FA* 200/2.8.

(visit image at Flickr).

All this thread is missing now are the shots by the blue K-30 user. They looked awesome on his back LCD already...

Great shots, how long was the exposure for the Nebula?

Thanks!

The Nebula was exposed for 30s using f/2.8 and ISO 800. I pushed it in post by 2.47 stops and cropped the image to yield an improved composition.

The inner part of the nebula is actually overexposed and I protected it from the exposure push I applied to other parts of the images. I could superimpose this image with another 10s exposure I made, but I think it wouldn't look much different to my manual darkening of the core.

At this magnification, 30s on a regular tripod would result in star trails already and I wouldn't recommend to go over 20s without an equatorial mount.

I wonder whether the blue K-30 owner has returned by now...