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I can certainly see that if you live in an apartment then it's really not a choice. I'm retired so time really isn't an issue for me but my family life is. I really think it would be hard to get my loved ones to understand that "opps, he's gone again, 4th time this week" and "be quiet, he's sleeping". It's not just my life I would be concerned about disrupting, not for a hobby, no matter how serious.
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4.98
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I've managed to slug it out in Bortle 8 for the most part; 15 of my last 20 posted shots are from Bortle 8 including a few, not too bad, galaxies - as long as I stay about 15 degrees above the horizon and collect a modest amount of data, I can deal with the LP. I actually find the seeing far worst than the LP in my area (and the fact that it's rarely clear!)
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8.11
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I've managed to slug it out in Bortle 8 for the most part; 15 of my last 20 posted shots are from Bortle 8 including a few, not too bad, galaxies - as long as I stay about 15 degrees above the horizon and collect a modest amount of data, I can deal with the LP. I actually find the seeing far worst than the LP in my area (and the fact that it's rarely clear!) That's gotta hurt with a 14 inch aperture! |
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I am under light pollution sky too, not sure which Bortle, but i keep thinking about doing all kind of astrophotography including broadband galaxies and clusters, i will not give up, but i am very very very late as i started like 8 years ago and i am still collecting gear and didn't continue or return back to astrophotography yet mainly since the LED street light started to work back in 2023 i guess.
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That's gotta hurt with a 14 inch aperture! It does because in addition to more signal it also picks up more LP - plus, running at 3910 mm Focal Length, although rewarding, can be quite challenging; sometimes no useful data results. |
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8.11
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I've just started experimenting with a 8" SCT and I'm amazed at how often the focus needs to be adjusted.
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0.90
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I shoot in a bortle 7 and have gotten good results(in my opinion). From how I see it it mostly comes down to getting better at processing. You may take a look at the revisions to see how I got better at processing them over time. Here are some of my images: Sunflower galaxy L- pro filter: https://www.astrobin.com/vsijcu/I/ Cats eye galaxy L- pro filter(80% moon):https://www.astrobin.com/74q98n/F/ Bodes galaxy LRGB (You can see some IFN but not much because the color data was noisy): https://www.astrobin.com/62j68d/ or https://www.astrobin.com/wxmex0/D/ Antenna galaxy:https://www.astrobin.com/vi8230/E/ Needle galaxy:https://www.astrobin.com/kuazc8/E/ I want to add that I have actually stopped using my light pollution filter as I have tested the results of unfiltered and filtered and unfiltered gives you better SNR, Better galaxy color(Although LP filters do boost the Hydrogen Alpha line in emission nebula), and better star color at any given time if you are better at dealing with gradient. (Also light pollution filters become less effective worse as we switch to LEDs.) For example the faint dust around the Pleiades: https://www.astrobin.com/tpc54i/E/ Or the running man:https://www.astrobin.com/isryt5/C/ I also am experimenting on a andromeda galaxy photo I took to see how much dust I can pull out: https://www.astrobin.com/5o697z/ I am currently working on m 51 and have taken Blue and green and a full moon and the results are actually pretty good but I will wait until I take red to post the image. |
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I shoot in a bortle 7 and have gotten good results(in my opinion). From how I see it it mostly comes down to getting better at processing. You may take a look at the revisions to see how I got better at processing them over time. Here are some of my images: Great info and great images. Any suggestions on how removing your LP filter affects you max exposure times? I'm actually wondering if this could speed up my imagining times. For example if I was doing 90 second subs with a lp filter and removed the filter could I go to 60 second subs and essentially capture the same data? |
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8.11
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It looks like going without any filter and long integrations is the way to go. I'm shooting OSC so I assume that a IR/UV cut filter will be needed?
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Many folks have already mentioned exposure time if you want to stay in the backyard. I have seen some of your results from some bright galaxies, and they are very good. You may want to push the boundary quite a bit, but as many have already mentioned, you will need to double or triple your exposure time. Perhaps consider two to three nights of good data. Traveling during galaxy season is a different challenge than during Milky Way season, where in the latter, you will have many nebulas that will be happy with a small portable mount and a small refractor. For many galaxies, you may want to try your large-aperture, long-focal-length telescope, which may not be so easy to pack up and then unpack back home when you are almost crying out for some quality sleep. Nothing beats the backyard provided you are ok with the extended imaging time. If you can spend several nights under a dark sky or attend a star party altogether, that would be a different story. My two cents. |
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I agree, more time which is very easy to make happen.
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Tony Gondola: I make due with UV IR cut filter. Or if you really suck a processing gradients a weak LP filter would work just fine assuming you put in a little more exposure time. |
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Agree that not much beats adding integration time. I prefer to gather a minimum of 8 hours or so on most targets. Bright targets could possibly manage a little less, and summary targets a little more. Ideally I'd like to hit at least 12-16 hours per target.
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Clayton Ostler:I shoot in a bortle 7 and have gotten good results(in my opinion). From how I see it it mostly comes down to getting better at processing. You may take a look at the revisions to see how I got better at processing them over time. Here are some of my images: Max exposure times can be very short as long as you are swamping the read noise with happens really fast in Light polluted sky's. There is actually a benefit to longer subs like less storage space or less dithering. From what I have seen longer sub exposures have slightly higher SNR than shorter exposures but the difference is almost negligible in LP skys (If you have issues like wind, flexure, or anything that can blur your image you may have slightly less detail in your images), if you have issues tracking or satellite trail issues you can go with shorter subs. I saw a video from lukomatico in which he did 10 minutes subs on a RASA in his bortle 7 backyard so I don't expect exposure time is a issue if you have slower telescopes than that. Here is the video if you are curious as to which one:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0JDvllCaV4&t=322s (Side note if you are shooting close to the seeing limit exposures will have to be longer because of the atmospheric blur) |
3.01
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Tony Gondola: So far, I have also been doing only narrowband imaging. Recently, after I completed Seagull nebula, I attempted to take a broadband target for the remaining portion of night. And I was pleasantly surprised. I went for 30s subs in Bortle ~8 (I could see no more than 10-15 stars with eyes), and below is what I got without any filter. Integration time being just 5 hours with ASI294MC pro on a WO 71GT APO with reducer (@at f/5). Definitely not a good photo, but I decided to keep it as my first broadband image, and it gave confidence that it may still be possible! Later next day, i stretched the subs higher to 60s on Bode's and Cigar galaxy (again, only 4 hours to play around), and the integrated image did show the galaxy distinctly. In narrowband, I do 5min subs, but I feel anything higher than 30s to 1 min (depending on altitude, etc) will be a wash for broadband. I do not have the luxury of dark skies nearby either, so even I am contemplating of moving to a higher focal length (C8 edge, etc) to be worth the cost or not. I have occasional thoughts of getting the L quad enhance filter from optolong, or doing mono, yet to decide. https://app.astrobin.com/i/66pz86 |
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Tony Gondola: Hi Tony. I am lucky to live in a Bortle 1 zone, and I also shoot Galaxies. I use a 2600MC and a 10 inch RC reduced to 1484mm and F5.9. I also use a UV/IR Cut filter but nothing more than that. I think you need to use a UV/IR cut, and you are right, long integrations best. sometimes I can get quite good results in a couple of hours, but for me I find 6 to 10 hours is better depending on the target. from where you live I believe that 30 hours or more might be essential. Final advice. dont bother when the moon is up. Good Luck. |
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Just finished the image of M 51 under a greater than 90% moon in my bortle 7 skys (At least equivalent to a bortle 8-9 with the moon up). Honestly I'm not afraid of doing RGB on a full moon anymore as long the target is a little bit away from the moon. Gradients sucked though. Full resolution here:https://www.astrobin.com/61eerg/  |
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8.11
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Tony Gondola: That's encouraging. I normally do short subs as a matter of course, mainly because I like the increase in resolution that it provides, typically 15 sec. works very well for me, even in dual band. I do end up with a lot of subs but I like to cull my stacks deeply, again to get the sharpest possible result. One experiment I do want to try is shooting in the near IR and combining that with broadband. In my tests the near IR is very clean. Not only is it affected less by seeing but it's also outside of most of the LP wavelengths. My 585 has good sensitivity past 700nm with the added bonus that at those wavelengths all the filters of the matrix pass a lot of light. |
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David Russell:Tony Gondola: Thanks for the input David. I really have the dual problem of high LP and a restricted sky due to trees. from 90 to about 20 degrees north I can get about 6 hours in so twelve would be easy. I'll have to see how it goes from there but you might be right about 30 hours being needed. In a way, having a restricted sky helps. Having a restricted set of targets makes it easier to spend the time needed on each one and makes me dig a little deeper into finding interesting subjects. |
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Just finished the image of M 51 under a greater than 90% moon in my bortle 7 skys (At least equivalent to a bortle 8-9 with the moon up). Honestly I'm not afraid of doing RGB on a full moon anymore as long the target is a little bit away from the moon. Gradients sucked though. Full resolution here:https://www.astrobin.com/61eerg/ That's a great result! I especially like the colors with the blue arms balanced nicely with the by the yellow of the cores. I noticed you are doing 4 to 5 hours a night. That's totally doable from my location. how wide are your RGB filters? I'm guessing that the RGB combination is acting much the same as a wide bandpass LP filter. |
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Tony Gondola: I have only one camera 294MC Pro at the moment - but I would be eager to learn from your observations near IR. As I said, I am planning to upgrade to a C8 EDGE, but I can make that leap of budget (and faith) only once I am reasonably confident that I would be able to get something good out of it  Off-topic, please feel free to reply separately (IM) - I would like to understand how low exposure will result in higher resolution. Is it because you expect lesser star trails, or something else. |
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Tony Gondola:Just finished the image of M 51 under a greater than 90% moon in my bortle 7 skys (At least equivalent to a bortle 8-9 with the moon up). Honestly I'm not afraid of doing RGB on a full moon anymore as long the target is a little bit away from the moon. Gradients sucked though. Full resolution here:https://www.astrobin.com/61eerg/  Here is the spectrum of the LRGB filters that I use.
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8.11
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Tony Gondola:Just finished the image of M 51 under a greater than 90% moon in my bortle 7 skys (At least equivalent to a bortle 8-9 with the moon up). Honestly I'm not afraid of doing RGB on a full moon anymore as long the target is a little bit away from the moon. Gradients sucked though. Full resolution here:https://www.astrobin.com/61eerg/ , That's about what I expected, overlapping B and G with a notch between 565 and 620. Did you do the L channel or just RGB? |
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Tony Gondola:Tony Gondola:Just finished the image of M 51 under a greater than 90% moon in my bortle 7 skys (At least equivalent to a bortle 8-9 with the moon up). Honestly I'm not afraid of doing RGB on a full moon anymore as long the target is a little bit away from the moon. Gradients sucked though. Full resolution here:https://www.astrobin.com/61eerg/ Just RGB this time |
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Hey, Just an unusual target suggestion: https://www.astrobin.com/kdvhgi/B/ The galaxy in the image looks like a smudge (  ) but it is quite faint. I'm sure with a larger aperture and longer integration, this faint dwarf can be images quite well. With my gear and pristine bortle 8 skies, I should not even have tried.Clear skies! Rajat |
