Unexplained time offset in QApplication event loop - qt

Question

I'm currently working with a program for predicting the locations of satellites in real-time. Something similar to this. The underlying library uses system time as input.
time_t now(time(0));
This program accurately predicts the real-time position of satellites when I run it on a C++ console application using Qt Creator.
The problem is when I use it in a fully-fledged Qt Gui application with a QApplication object in the main function. In the program, the prediction function is periodically by the timer event function. That way I update the positions every 2 seconds. Unfortunately, The output doesn't match (either on the GUI or when I print it). It is like the orbital propagator is using a different time when calculating the satellite positions.
void TrackingManager::timerEvent(QTimerEvent *event)
{
int nNumSats = m_Satellites.size() ;
//std::cout << __func__ << " - Number of satellites = " << nNumSats << std::endl;
std::vector<SatPosition> vSatPositions;
if (nNumSats >= 0)
{
time_t now(time(0));
std::cout << __func__ << "time(0) = " << asctime(gmtime(&now)) << std::endl;
for(int i = 0; i < nNumSats; i++)
{
// Get satellite names and calculate position, altitude etc
SatPosition spPos;
GetInstantPredict(m_Satellites[i], now, spPos);
vSatPositions.push_back(spPos);
}
emit UpdateSatPosition(vSatPositions);
}
}
Even more confusing, the program works fine when I run the debugger (GDB on Ubuntu). It is as if GDB somehow manages to "fix" the problem. Does this make any sense?