Best AstroPhotography locations in Hertfordshire?

[AstroHa]

Hi everyone,

I’m completely new to Astrophotography and am just in the process of choosing my new rig.

 

does anyone living locally in Hertfordshire have any recommendations for the best areas with the least light pollution around Hemel Hempstead way? 
 

I’m thinking Ashridge / Ivanhoe so it gets you high enough so leave the worse of light pollution behind - I tried taking some shots from my back garden and it was just consumed by yellow colour cast 😩 

Any ideas I would grateful - found a thread on Hertfordshire skies but it favoured towards the east of Hertfordshire whereas I’m more West way. 
 

thanks all! 

Edited December 23, 2020 by AstroHa

[Roy Challen]

Hi, welcome to SGL. I'm in Watford, and apart from a brief dalliance with AP, I only do visual. You mention Ashridge and Ivinghoe, and I think these are your best bets - certainly for visual. However, flight paths from Luton airport could be a problem for AP.

Good luck, you'll need it!😉

[AstroHa]

Haha thanks Roy! The fact you do some visual from Watford is encouraging enough for me! I’m hoping to invest in a light pollution filter to avoid the horrible yellow colour cast I got so the first few photos I took, and I couldn’t seem to get rid of it.

 

I’ll take your point on the flight paths but encouraging that you agree with those spots, keeping my fingers crossed 🤞 😂

[nephilim]

I'm not familiar with your area but a couple of good filters for heavily light polluted areas are the optolong l‑enhance & optolong l-extreme, the l-extreme is particularly good for imaging when the moons out & about. These filters are fairly pricey but imo worth the investment.
Also at some point you may want to guide, guiding enables you to 'dither' which helps eliminate all sorts of artifacts such as airplane/ satellite trails, fixed pattern noise etc. This link explains a bit about it https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-blogs/astrophotography-jerry-lodriguss/why-how-dither-astro-images/

Edited December 24, 2020 by nephilim

[ollypenrice]

21 minutes ago, AstroHa said:

Haha thanks Roy! The fact you do some visual from Watford is encouraging enough for me! I’m hoping to invest in a light pollution filter to avoid the horrible yellow colour cast I got so the first few photos I took, and I couldn’t seem to get rid of it.

 

I’ll take your point on the flight paths but encouraging that you agree with those spots, keeping my fingers crossed 🤞😂

Did you try Pixinsight's Dynamic Background Extraction?  My own images are taken here under very darks skies but sometimpes guests bring along data taken from heavily light polluted sites. A linear stack will open to reveal an almost uniform sheet of bright orange but, incredibly, DBE turns this into an astrophoto in a minute or two!

Olly

[emyliano2000]

12 hours ago, AstroHa said:

Hi everyone,

I’m completely new to Astrophotography and am just in the process of choosing my new rig.

 

does anyone living locally in Hertfordshire have any recommendations for the best areas with the least light pollution around Hemel Hempstead way? 
 

I’m thinking Ashridge / Ivanhoe so it gets you high enough so leave the worse of light pollution behind - I tried taking some shots from my back garden and it was just consumed by yellow colour cast 😩 

Any ideas I would grateful - found a thread on Hertfordshire skies but it favoured towards the east of Hertfordshire whereas I’m more West way. 
 

thanks all! 

Hello and welcome to SGL. 

I'm doing astrophotography from my back garden in Bushey and with a lot of patience and integration time you can get some pretty good results. 

You can see what can be achieved on my Web page https://emilandronic.co.uk/deep-space-photos

Ivinghoe is indeed a very good location, if you can get your gear up to the beacon, it's even better. I camped there for one night and I loved it. 

Emil

Edited December 24, 2020 by emyliano2000