Dealing with light pollution
Posted: Tue May 22, 2018 2:55 am
The usual apologies if this has been already covered. I am pretty new here and to EAA as well.
Like so many these days, I suffer the curse of light polluted skies--a red to white zone becoming ever whiter it seems. My setup is an AstroTech 72EDII with an ASI 224 camera, all riding a Celestron AVX GEM mount.
I seem to do fairly well with targets such as globular clusters. But am having difficulty capturing more nebulous things --the really good stuff--without washing out the background. Gradient removal in StarTools is somewhat effective. But I would like to capture the best image possible in live stacking as well.
Tweaking the histogram so that signal to skyglow seems optimal also frequently disables live stacking. I tend to have difficulty with live stacking generally. Maybe also due at least in part to light pollution?
I am in the process of fitting a focal reducer to my little refractor which should bring the focal ratio down to around f/4.8. I am hoping this might help.
Any advice would be appreciated.
Like so many these days, I suffer the curse of light polluted skies--a red to white zone becoming ever whiter it seems. My setup is an AstroTech 72EDII with an ASI 224 camera, all riding a Celestron AVX GEM mount.
I seem to do fairly well with targets such as globular clusters. But am having difficulty capturing more nebulous things --the really good stuff--without washing out the background. Gradient removal in StarTools is somewhat effective. But I would like to capture the best image possible in live stacking as well.
Tweaking the histogram so that signal to skyglow seems optimal also frequently disables live stacking. I tend to have difficulty with live stacking generally. Maybe also due at least in part to light pollution?
I am in the process of fitting a focal reducer to my little refractor which should bring the focal ratio down to around f/4.8. I am hoping this might help.
Any advice would be appreciated.