Obstructed horizon....

[chubster1302]

This might be a "dumb" question but here goes. When standing in an "average" garden, let's say 15 x 15m houses all around. How much of the horizon is blocked by the neighbouring houses?

Wanna know what things I can see using stellarium 

 

[IB20]

Not a dumb question at all! My garden is probably a bit smaller than 15m2 but my southerly horizon is around the attached. 
If you have a smart phone you could try one of the apps (SkySafari is really good; can’t remember if stellarium has such?) that has the AR mode or compass feature and work out what altitude you can access by finding a bright object or an easy constellation first and working towards the horizon.

[scotty38]

What might be a dumb response 🙂 is that the higher you are and the further away from the obstruction you are the less it affects your view.... In my experience a metre further back is better than a metre higher. I have not done any maths to verify that, just my own garden scenario 🙂

Edited February 7, 2023 by scotty38

[Carbon Brush]

Assuming you are restricted to using small part of the garden, your horizon is fixed.
Take basically any mount (altaz or EQ) that has an angle marked and put a finder on there.
Alternatively use a digital angle gauge if you have one.
Just point it around the roof lines and you get an indication of horizon in various directions.
I did something along these lines when thinknig about the site for my observatory.
A valid thing with houses. But not valid in the long term if there are trees🤔

HTH, David.
 

[Astrobits]

Digital angle gauge, there are apps for smartphones. I have one called "Spirit Level". You can aim the edge of the phone at the horizon and freeze the reading.

Nigel

 

[Gfamily]

If you are using Desktop Stellarium, you can take a series of images to capture the horizon from your viewing spot, and with this create a custom Landscape (accessible under the F4 Sky and Viewing Options pop-up) 

How to: here 

Edited February 7, 2023 by Gfamily

[Stu]

With Observer Pro on iOS you can map out accurately your horizon and then import it to SkySafari. Works very well. There’s a guide on how to do this somewhere on the forum written by @AdeKing. I’ll try to find it.

This is my horizon from the bottom of the garden, very good to the South but there’s a tree in the way facing North. I can move to other spots for that.

[jjohnson3803]

On 07/02/2023 at 12:38, Stu said:

With Observer Pro on iOS you can map out accurately your horizon and then import it to SkySafari. Works very well. There’s a guide on how to do this somewhere on the forum written by @AdeKing. I’ll try to find it.

Wow, that's quite impressive.  I'll have to try that.  Until now, I've just taken notes on altitudes and azimuths of obstructions.  (There's a larch that really needs to get hit by lightning...)

 

[Stu]

38 minutes ago, jjohnson3803 said:

Wow, that's quite impressive.  I'll have to try that.  Until now, I've just taken notes on altitudes and azimuths of obstructions.  (There's a larch that really needs to get hit by lightning...)

 

Good, isn’t it?

I found the cheesily titled thread which contains an attempt at giving instructions on how to set this up.

Hope this is of some use.

Stu

[malftobe]

Seconding @Stu advice above about adding a horizon in SkySafari Pro - takes a bit of work - I used the tutorial linked above. But is invaluable for planning which targets are visible for me with a small back garden and lots of obstructions.

 

Can scan around the sky and play with the time buttons to see when targets will be visible or set in the constraints of my small garden. 
 

screenshot showing house to NE

And a tree to SW which loves being captured on images!