Has LP killed my hobby

[Kit-Fox]

This might not help immediately but... Our local council (Chelmsford in Essex) has just decided to switch off street lights at midnight to save money. Perhaps this will spread to other areas soon. It isn't that visibility suddenly improves, just that around midnight, you suddenly think that 'the seeing really is quite good tonight' and then remember that the lights have gone off and go into the front garden to check.

not trying to be the downer, but it wont last & it wont spread.  Other areas in the country have tried turning off lights before between various different times, what happened was everyone who wasnt interested in astronomy went a whined at their local council like the big babies they are saying things like ;

- its made the crime rate go up, the daily mail says so!! (in fact in al lthe areas that have tried it the crime rate went down)

- we cant see where we are walking when trying to get home from the pub and fall down the kerb, so we want compensation! (because taking a tiny lil hand torch with them was apparently impossible)

& of course the ultimate excuse for some of these people;

- we need to make night into day so we can do more (despite sleeping in their beds, so how more gets done i'm not entirely sure & apparently nature has no need for darkness after all those millions of years of evolution making use of the day/night cycle)

So if you want it to stay, you need to get organised with your friends and get everyone to write or pop into their local council meetings saying what a wonderful thing it is to have all those lights turned off or it wont last

[Guy Wells]

I can see a smudge through a 114mm Newt' from London...

[Via Lactea]

I'm sorry to hear about that. I usually take off to do my obs, but then I'm lucky in having access to fields and being about fifteen minute's drive to countryside. Hope that you have a better run of luck. And good on you going to the RGO, that's one of my ambitions for next year

[bcfcciderhead]

Thanks for the replays guys.

I'm putting it down to bad seeing(fingers crossed).

So when I get back out there with all the little problems sorted will let you know.

The royal observatory was good and you can see why it was built on such a hill, great view, was also good to see a original section of the Williams Herschel telescope after going to his house in Bath in the summer, which was also good.

[nytecam]

That's what I thought, maybe just not looking hard enough. But my main concern was when I up the magnification everything goes very dark and can't focus. Sent from my iPhone 5 using Tapatalk - now Free (I like free)

I'm IN London so no need to talk about LP:-) You need to up your game by dumping the EP for video camera or like me a Lodestar OSC camera - LP and full moon are of no consequence anymore. Even 10s exp last night recorded mag 15 gxys under LP/moonlight :-)

[Macavity]

Subjectivity has the casting vote but I often pay some heed to the theory and measurement.

As a <cough> video astronomer, I can "see" down to "sky background" - I just turn up the camera gain. lol. With the (my dodgy) naked eye, I can see to mag +5 at the zenith fairly easily. Plots suggest that the corresponding sky background is then about +18! The problem with M31 (M33 too) is notably low surface brightness. Large (close) galaxies may be appear "bright" in a catalogue, but this spread over a large area. M31 has SB +14(?) - The typical values for compact galaxies can approach +11 or +12? A little makes a lot of difference.

But the numbers approximately scale. If you have merely mag +3 (+2) skies, the sky background is still +16 (+15) etc.  (I reckon!) Even badly light polluted skies have SOME potential (visual!) "signal to noise"? So don't give up hope! I do believe a lot of the limiting factor from here (N.Wales) is transparency. You can see the grey-gunge hovering above the horizon at sunset - particularly towards the UK mainland. lol. Pale yellow daytime skies (spread aircraft contrails?) seem more more common than in my youth...

If you have invested in an observatory, maybe a sky quality meter too?

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/unihedron-sky-quality-meters.html

Ever happy to receive useful Christmas Presents...

[bcfcciderhead]

Some interesting points, quite like the sound of going down the video camera road then using an EP

Sent from my iPhone 5 using Tapatalk - now Free (I like free)

[DoctorD]

As another self confessed video astronomer I can vouch for the benefits when faced with light pollution. You have to be aware that the field of view might be a bit narrower than you are used to - typically similar to a 6 or 8mm eyepiece, although focal reducers (if you have enough focus range) can double this.

Chef out the Video Astronomy section - it's under Science.

Clear skies

Paul

[Liquid360]

Yes.

- Nate

Birmingham, AL

[bcfcciderhead]

All this camera talk is getting me thinking that maybe I should try it.

I thought all these cameras are very expensive?, but then see you buy cameras of fleebay and make them fit etc, what type and where to look for a cam and what can I expect to see?

is it like has been said, you look at a screen instead of a EP?

[Russe]

I'm imaging with a used Canon 450D off of fleebay for 150£. Bought the astronomik CLS (light pollution) clip filter and it seems fairly ok for me in Cardiff center...

[LouisJB]

I've had trouble finding M31 - later realised I was pointing right at it but too zoomed in, so all you get is a gradual fade and the lack of contrast meant it wasn't discernible at all. But that's probably just happened to me, being a dumb newb

I'd suggest get setup and working with your wide field eyepieces until you know what the sky is like and have orientated what you can see properly.

Transparency is definitely variable, sometimes the sky appears dark yet nothing is sharp and stands out in the eyepiece - I think in this case sometimes there is an almost indiscernible faint high clouds and unless something like the Moon is out to reveal them, they can't really be seen directly.

The other thing is dew, on other occasions I've failed to see much or get focus, turned out something somewhere got fogged up, leaving dark nothing, like you describe.

However, doesn't sound like you're new to this so I guess you thought of these things. If LP were really that bad I would expect you'd have noticed by eye straight away.

Just some ideas. Hope you get it sorted.