Does light pollution affect imaging?

[OzDave]

Hi,

This is probably a really daft question, but suppose I am trying to do some astrophotography in a light polluted area with sodium street lights and houses and other typical urban stuff.

Obviously the lights pollute my own vision so that I can't really see much more than the brightest stars. However, if I point the scope away from the light sources and basically upwards, will the light sources interfere with the imaging, or will the scope effectively not see the lights because it is looking in a different direction?

I would expect to get polluted results if I was trying to view something in the same direction as the lights, but I wonder if its still an issue when looking the opposite direction?

Thanks,

David

[skye at night]

YES.... Very much so....

In fact your camera will pick up all stray light to a higher apparent degree than your eyes because it will 'accumulate' the influence of the LP in exposures and increasingly so with longer ones... LP is often the main (assuming good tracking/guiding) limiting factor in exposure length...

Even stray light from a different direction will affect images.

Filters can be used to varying degrees of success to overcome the effects.

Processing can also be efficiently used to remove it also...

In an ideal world a clear truly dark sky would be King, but at least there are ways to overcome the ever increasing problem of LP.

steve

[Dangerous-Dave]

I'm afraid that scenario would only be true if you were on the moon or some other airless environment. The atmosphere reflects the general orange crud from miles around.