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The Andromeda shot I botched last month taught me a filter hack
I drove out to a dark spot near Flagstaff last month to finally get a clear shot of the Andromeda Galaxy. Set up my telescope and camera, took about 200 frames over two hours. When I got home and stacked them, the whole thing had this ugly orange gradient from a distant parking lot light I didn't even notice. I was ready to scrap the whole project. Then I remembered a tip from a forum post three years ago about using a cheap UV/IR cut filter to block out scattered light pollution. I slapped one on last weekend and tried again from my backyard in Phoenix. The gradient was almost gone and the detail on the dust lanes popped right out. Has anyone else had luck using filters to fix a specific light source ruining their images?
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jadep4117d ago
oh man, that exact same thing happened to me with a shot of the Orion Nebula a few months back. i spent three nights driving out to the middle of nowhere only to come home and find a hideous pinkish streak from a neighbor's damn security light i completely missed. i tried a cheap clip-in light pollution filter someone recommended and it saved the whole image, the stars looked way sharper and the nebula colors actually came through.
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white.grant17d ago
Yeah I'm not sure I buy that a cheap filter is really fixing that much of a problem... maybe it's just masking it. @jadep41 I feel like you could've just taken a couple of gradient subtraction flats and saved yourself the hassle.
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