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I live 40 km off the center of Athens (5 million pop) in Greece. Fortunately on my South SouthEast are only a few houses and the sea, thus light pollution there is not very annoying, but trying to shoot anything at the Northern Sky is a problem in both Guiding and Frame Shooting. Thus I try mostly to choose targets that are not travelling to the North as much as possible |
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Hi, I am in the middle two cities at the border between France and Switzerland (Geneva in Switzerland and its Satellite city Annemasse in France 5km appart, and me and my scope in the middle). My SQM-L reads from 18.10 (this when I start at minimum) to a record of 19.05 (wow). Mostly around 18.60 in a good night. Have to wait sometimes a bit until the soccer stadium north turns off the lights at around 23h00 in winter  . Best moments are Sundays during holidays (not many occurences in the year). I shoot with an OSC, use the IDAS LP D1 QRO (the best until now).To cope with all that adversity (including scarsity of personal wealth), I have chosen a fast f4 newton with asa reducer (to f3). I ditter and try to shoot hundreds of 180 secs exposures. I should still accumulate way more hours on every single target to erode light pollution. At that speed, I am limited by my ATIK 460 in resolution for smaller objects (all galaxies + planetary nebulas). Thinking seriously about the future ASI183 Mono or QHY183 Mono to increase sampling and resolution without loosing speed (which is the key in my situation). Want to keep things small, light and moderately expensive (so only small chip, little vignetting, light camera, 10kg payload etc...). Still constantly and completely overwhelmed by what one can get from an improbable place, to capture these elusive wonders of the darkness in the middle of our screaming contemporary society lights. Digital photography turned the « revealing » process of a picture even more fascinating. Stevan |
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Evening everybody! I'm in a red zone just outside NYC, in NJ. The smallest bit of cloud cover makes for an excellent light pollution mirror. While it is possible to image without one, a light pollution filter is my new best friend. At the same time, the detail and color that can be extracted from some of these images under these less than ideal conditions, is part of the reason I love this hobby. Clear skies! Jeff |
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Hi, hello people, i'm new of this group, and trying to restart this hobby after a 25 years suspension. I live in the middle of the Silicon Valley, in a white zone with a very limited sky from the backyard. Yesterday night the visual limit was around 3.5/4. I was barely able to spot Megrez, 3.52. My major problem is that i'm collimating my new 8"RC, and after doing all the possible indoor, I'm struggling to find a decent star field for final test... oh well somebody said the the fun is in the challenge! Nevertheless I will stubbornly continue to try to catch and separate those good photons from the background soup... Clear (and dark) sky! Paolo |
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Hello everyone! I live in a small city in the south of Netherlands, though I live not so far from an industrial site and a railway station. On the light pollution map my area is reported Bortle 6 but i'd say it ranges from 5 to 7. The Industrial site is at about 3km south-west from my garden but anyway I have a 20mt pine that covers that area, the railway station has recently changed the lightning system from mercury vapor bad shielded lamps to intelligent LED well shielded ones. I know LED has a broader spectrum but I have to say that it looks much darker, probably because they lights auto-dim when not necessary (at night for instance!!  )Also the industrial site is going on this way and most of it will have intelligent shielded LED lamps within 2020. I totally agree with Jeff Kuderna on the comment above: I'd love to image under dark skies but taking out nice pictures from such light polluted skies makes me feel like I'm doing some kind of withcraft and I find it absolutely cool  |
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I am late here, but i started last year, and i was going to give up as i know that i will never get anything from my yard except the sun and the moon or very bright star only, but once i started to read about astrophotography and most likely blown away from reading some could do it under light pollution sky i couldn't sleep, so that i came across narrowbanding and that was my first journey to buy astro stuff, i live in a small city too, ofcourse light polluted, red zone very close to white, but my yard area and around isn't so much lit, and that can help me sometimes, and mostly by midnight as most houses are turning off their lights so it is getting slightly darker. So far NB isn't bad, didn't test many targets yet, and LRGB sounds ok if not in full moon or early in the evening when/where there are more lights from around, but the best side or direction of the sky in my yard is East then followed by North, and i am very luck enough that GOD gifted me with Polaris shiny up in front of me, i just point my face and scope to the main gate of my fence and it is up there, no tree nothing in the way at all, high enough, so i can polar alignment easily, Thank GOD! |
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| I live just outside of Chicago with a deck that faces South (so luckily not looking over the city). I can also set up in my in-laws backyard to at least how more sky to see, but they have pretty much the same lighting conditions. Haven't tested anything yet as I am currently just doing visual, but want to start getting at least a beginner photography setup going soon. I was hoping I could just buy an eq mount and use my current Canon 70d with a lens and some sort of filter to at least get some pictures of galaxies or nebula. |
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I'm in very near surburb of Paris... 3kms I'm next to Paris too. I shoot mainly SHO due to LP and my O3 layer is ranging from bad to shitty even while using a Chroma 3nm ..... |
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Gary Curran: Delco! Sorry, but I'm not sharing my Krimpets. ;) |
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Hi everyone, I live in the suburbian area of Rome, Bortle 6, not the worse. At present I temporarily stay in Tuscany, under a very beautiful Bortle 4 sky, but close to a huge parking area with a marvellous floodlight pointing toward my location... CS |
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I’m about 3 miles from the centre of Liverpool in the UK with Bortle 8 skies, oh and lots of cloud and rain. Not troubled too much with neighbours security lights though the odd one triggers now and again ruining a sub 😕. I do image LRGB without LP filters as my favourites are galaxies, processing is a real challenge for me but I keep on learning. I did use a Lumicon deep sky filter for a while but that doubled the exposure time, haven’t used any of the more recent filters yet. I find imaging everything from galaxies to the Moon to...whatever seems interesting helps keep me happy and I try to be content with the best I can do. I’ve been at this since the late 60’s from similar locations around Liverpool when I was using film with a 10s exposure I could get great constellation photos, I could even see Uranus with the naked eye! One thought often crosses my mind, in the daytime after the passage of a cold front and the air is clear, the sky is probably as good as anywhere in the world....until the sun sets and the streetlights come on 😔 Clear skies everyone! |
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Guess I'm a little luckier than most. I live at Umina Beach, about 60km north of Sydney, Australia. It's a large population area called the Central Coast but it's quite spread out so I have a Bortle 4 sky from my backyard. I have been into visual Astronomy for over 40 years owning several telescopes up to a 25" Dobsonian. I am also a professional Photographer shooting Weddings and events as well as running Workshops on Landscape and Nightscape photography. I took my first Milky Way shots in 1983 when I bolted my first camera a Cosina to my Tasco 114 scope and hand-guided it for 4 minutes. I eventually got quite good at this in both setup and a steady hand so I have some great shots of comet Halley and the areas around the galactic centre and the Crux, Carina region. Eventually, I moved into big scope observing and left the photography behind. In 2009 I purchased the Nikon D3s for my work and realised its potential for nightscape photography immediately. It was the first camera to be able to shoot at ISO3200 cleanly and so I started to capture the landscape at night. I discovered the 600rule as much by experimentation as web surfing and realised the potential for a fast long lens in capturing Nebula. Eta Carina was my first target and a 2" shot revealed quite a bit with a 300mm f2.8. I now shoot with the Nikon D5 and the Z6II and I am amazed at the quality of the images I can produce in just a single RAW file. The introduction of the Skywatcher Star Adventurer opened a new window on my night photography and when a second hand Orion, Sirius EQ-G goto mount became available I jumped at the chance of being able to try my hand at some dedicated Astrophotography. My Earlier Observer self would probably be horrified at what I'm now doing as I thought the Astrophotographers were a bit weird. I suppose it still is but the results are rewarding. |
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I am at the edge of the Detroit Metro suburbia. 10 miles to the south and west - open corn fields, 10 miles to the North or East ~1M+ people in each direction. In general my sky conditions can be broken into 9 sectors following Bortel 5 directly overhead. Luckily local LP is ok as most of my neighbors notice when my scope is setup and leave the exterior/flood lights off. Sky transparency is generally low with the great lakes and seeing often battles the jet-stream. ------ 678 556 454 ------- Trending to the negative each year. |
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| I live along the central Gulf Coast of the US about mid way between Mobile AL and New Orleans, LA. Solid yellow zone on most light pollution maps. My sky is Bortle 5 (19.5-20 mag/arcsec) at zenith and solid suburban but I can see the faint Milky Way looking south over the Gulf. It's dim but it's there. My neighborhood luckily borders a National Park so no lights to my south to the ocean. My neighborhood has new LED street lighting (brighter than previous sodium lights) but also full cut off so in the end its better as less light falls on my backyard and house. We worked with the town to install lower poles when the new lighting went up. The old sodium lights lit up my house like day time. The town has also installed full cut off lighting in many areas and the zenith is actually a bit darker now than several years ago. I also have many casino's 10mi to my west and the largest Chevron refinery 15mi to my East. However I can do LRGB imaging without much issue. The key is not to shoot too low. Luckily I have a dome and the scope is not lit up by lights. My neighbors installed light shields on their outdoor spot lights which I bought for them and pointed them away from my observatory so I'm lucky in that respect. I usually can produce images almost as good as I can from a dark sky site but it takes a lot of time and since I'm home, time is easy. To produce a image nearly as good as what I can do at a dark site take about 20-30hrs of exposure time sometimes over a month or two. At a dark site I can do the same thing in 8-10hrs. So, even though it takes time it's possible. A good understanding of how to remove light gradients from your images is also key. Shielding your scope from artificial light is also something you must do to get the best results. |
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My situation is normal ... all f***ked up lol I am just near Temple Newsam ... a Tudor-Jacobean house in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, with grounds landscaped by Capability Brown. The estate lends its name to the Temple Newsam ward of Leeds City Council, in which it is situated, and lies to the east of the city. Not in the house itself you understand ! My scopes are on the patio in the backgarden of our bungalow on the nearby 70's housing estate The main light dome of Leeds (population 760k) is at the front of the house (south) things are looking a little better looking north which looking out of the city Clear skies suggests it is Bortle 7 on average , other sources say Bortle 8 On the few occasions i have been able to travel to a "dark" sky site (best i have been is bortle 4) i am amazed at the difference its makes to the amount of time you need to get a decent image .... i am trying to develop patience as even with my f4 scope i think 15 hours is needed to get a clean looking image with narrow band imaging ... thats why most pics are a bit noisy as 15 hours difficult to get due to those clouds things which are very common here in Yorkshire |
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I live in the center of Vienna / Austria, so mostly I am in narrowband. Light pollution improved in the last years as they changed citylights which focus more downwards - but they are LED. Also in earlyer days the lights were reduced to about 50% ad midnight but now already at 10 p.m. My balkony is on the topmost (5 th) floor and I have about 180° sight to SSE. Beyond the balkony is a big garden like kind of court with old trees and nearly no lights. |
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| I live in northern Orange County, California, square in the middle of the Los Angeles light dome although I'm closer to Bortle 8 than 9. I shoot broadband RGB (no Lum) all spring for galaxy season with a 10" newt and switch to an 80mm for wide field mix of broadband and narrowband between July and March. No permanent setup; I lug my G11G and scope out each night I want to capture. I've got power lines on the backside of my house which reduces my useable subframes for anything south of the celestial equator and doubles the number of nights I need. Lately I have been setting a goal of 20-40 hours minimum on each target. Once I stopped feeling like I had to capture everything out there, I settled down and got much better results. Luckily not much rain here, I'm pretty comfy letting my setup chug away all night while I sleep. RGB and dialing in my flats has been the sanity saver for me, OSC just causes me too many headaches with gradient removal. |
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I'm relatively lucky, I live in the Australian, Central Coast region of NSW. It's about 60km due North of Sydney with a large area of National Park and waterways. I have a Bortle 4 sky in my backyard, 30 minutes drive to a Bortle 3, and 90 minutes to a near Bortle 1. I was originally a visual observer with telescopes up to a 25" Obsession f5. I started in Astronomy at age 8 when my brother was given a telescope for Christmas. He wasn't interested and but used it one night to look for the bright star next to the Moon. That star ended up being Saturn and I was blown away, the Moon looked amazing but here were the rings I had heard about. I used that 70mm refractor for about 3 years, then found a Tasco 114 second-hand. By 13 I was getting interested in Photography as well and I learned to attach my camera to the tube and set up the equatorial to do hand-guided long exposures of the Milky Way. I even captured Haley's comet that way during the Lunar Eclipse. I saved my pocket money and odd jobs to purchase my first Nikon FE and then a 10" Dobsonian. I eventually decided to concentrate on Visual observing purchasing my 20" dob when I was 23. Eventually, Photography became a part-time job, shooting Weddings and Events in 2009 I purchased my first Pro body Nikon the D3S and I quickly realised that the ISO performance on that camera would allow me to capture the Milky Way and the foreground in a single shot. I started to capture Nightscape images, and pretty soon my clients wanted their wedding shots to include the stars. I started to get back into guided astrophotography in 2010, first with a Vixen Polari and then the original Skywatcher Star Adventurer. I went from wide shots to telephoto shots of the usual suspects. In 2018 I found a secondhand Orion Sirius Goto mount and my obsession with Astrophotography has gone from there. It wasn't long before the telephoto lenses but found I wanted more. I used an old ED 80 I had as a finder for the big dobs, then found a second-hand 8" f4 GSO scope. I'm sure most of you know the drill of wanting more. Now I shoot with the EQ6-R mount and the 8" f4 Quattro and the ZWO ASI2600MC camera. I now do my Photography full time and I incorporate a series of Workshops, both individual and small groups, teaching Nightscape photography as well as showing people how to get started shooting with Telescopes. I can remember during the year 10 work experience interview what my ideal work would be. I immediately answered Astronomer or Photographer. Now in my 50's I can say I'm doing what 15-year-old me wanted to do. |
