Snow and light pollution...

[emadmoussa]

This ugly glow is a small car park in the town centre. Get some snow, and snow vapour, around the area and the hint of orange turns into a nerve recking scene for any astronomer.

Actually, the photo is a bit worse than reality. The camera night mode tends to amplify light anyway. However, with the snow, to the naked eye, the glow is perhaps 3 times worse than normal... 

Luckily, though, this is the only polluted direction and the lights are turned off later at night. 

 

[DaveS]

I had something similar, though from a darker site. A farmer over the way has a couple of LED floods on his barn (I suppose to give thieves some light to nick by). Normally they're not a problem, but during the eclipse there must have been some mist in the valley. The result was as if he had a blummin' great searchlight pointing at me. I had  look just now, and the lights were back to normal.

[Moonshane]

It's worse in my garden

[Moonshane]

Same image with garden lights off. The background lights never go off.

[emadmoussa]

Is this Manchester? 

[Moonshane]

My garden faces Ashton-Under-Lyne and Manchester so yep, not ideal. I am planning an obsy in the bottom of the garden although only views to the south and east will be worth it).

 

[emadmoussa]

Ah well, very rarely does anybody get an all-directions LP-free environment. South and East are great, though. North is often useless and West is where objects go when they leave work in the East.  

[Gina]

SW is the problem here - the town of Honiton about 5 miles away.  But it's nothing like as bad as Manchester!  I really want to get back to imaging this year but a bad cough is keeping me in the warm ATM ?

[Can always make it better]

On 23/01/2019 at 16:47, Moonshane said:

It's worse in my garden

Holy cow. Do you live on the edge of a cliff or steep hill?

[Moonshane]

Yeah a steep hill. The garden drops 20 feet over about 90 feet and is terraced all the way down. We raised the bit you see by about four feet or so to level it.

 

[DAVE AMENDALL]

Some parts of Greater Manchester have quite decent skies. I lived in the Bredbury Romiley area  of Stockport  some years ago which was better than average. It got even better as you moved towards Glossop...Dave

[Beulah]

Local light pollution very present in my area...and even a conservation designation does nothing to mitigate it...a local industrial unit has changed their downlighters for eye-piercing square bulkheads! Light path shines up and horizontal, but not down, where I am sure most people would like to see where to put their feet. No wonder SQM values have declined in recent years (I measure night sky quality as part of my job)...

 

 

[laser_jock99]

I've found with a bit of snow on the ground, even from a dark sky site, the refelectivity makes it like daylight. Add a bit of moon.....

 

[GeorgeLiv]

Up-light increases by a factor of 7x from no-snow asphalt surfaces to fresh white snow on the ground. Light-pollution depends on many factors but primarily the type of zone the offending lights are situated in.

@Beulah - What SQM readings do you have? My dark-sky location (near Denbigh, Ontario, Canada) has gotten darker in the last two years. My summer SQM readings are now at at 22.1 mag/arc-squared. Two years ago it was 21.8 at the very best of conditions.

[laser_jock99]

On 11/03/2019 at 09:00, GeorgeLiv said:

 My summer SQM readings are now at at 22.1 mag/arc-squared. Two years ago it was 21.8 at the very best of conditions.

Do you suffer from varying levels of airglow? This can be a factor in dark sky areas.