Garden parasol as a solution to street lights?

[Spedz]

I have recently ordered a Skywatcher 200p dob, I'm hoping to receive it soon.  But something I've been worrying about has been the amount of light trespass in my garden.  I've included a couple of photos of the 4 lights, I live near a fairly busy road.

I've previously contacted my local council asking for some form of shielding to be installed on the lights, they replied that they would send someone to fix the problem but no one ever ended up coming, this happened around the 2nd lockdown so I wasn't really surprised and then it was Christmas followed by the 3rd lockdown.

As a temporary measure, how effective would a garden parasol be to block out the direct glare from these lights when observing?  I was looking into doing something homemade with a tarp but the height of the lights makes me feel that wouldn't work.  My current thinking is that with one of those big 3m parasols that have a tiltable canopy on Amazon I would effectively block at least 3 of the 4 lights depending on which direction in the sky I want to observe.

 

Thanks in advance

Edited March 17, 2021 by Spedz

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

Nightmarish!

It looks like you will need to do something like construct a tarp shield about seven foot high or more and be prepared to lose access to the observable sky in the direction of the lights. As for the parasol, it won't do any harm to try. Don't wait for the telescope to arrive. Take it out and test it...

I replaced my aged rear wooden fence with a 8ft job just to block one LED street lamp approx. 20 metres distant. It meant losing the western view from about 70° down but was worth every penny.

The tarp shield behind blocks an unpredictable insecurity light.

You're in an unenviable predicament!

 

 

[Laurieast]

I use one of those 3 meter cantilever parasols to protect my scopes from neighbours garden lights. You can open it fully with it still in the virtical position. It's very effective and easy to move around.

They still haven't figured out why that man put's his parasol up at night.

Also useful on extreme hot days if your windows face west.

 

 

 

 

Edited March 19, 2021 by Laurieast

[teoria_del_big_bang]

3 minutes ago, Laurieast said:

Also useful on extreme hot days if your windows face west.

If the year carries on as it is I doubt it will get much use as a sun canopy but I admire your optimism 🙂 

Steve

[teoria_del_big_bang]

I would definitely keep on to your local authority about the shading, I thought they were obliged to do this when requested.

Steve

[Ricochet]

If you already have the parasol, give it a go. Anything that you can do to block light will be an improvement. I would also consider anything that you can do to make things darker on an even more local scale. Buy or make a dew shield to help block stray light from entering the telescope, buy a patch for your non-observing eye and a spot bandit to stop stray light entering around the top of the eyepiece. I would also use some sort of observing hood. You can buy a specialist astronomy hood or you might have a coat with a suitably large hood already, or simply drape a towel over you head to block light. Once you have found an object and have your stray light blocking devices in place, make sure that you observe that object for an extended period of time so that your night vision can improve.