Toxic Coolaid wrote in post #19052271
I guess my answer is that yes, astrophotography can be done with light pollution. Equipment and the amount of time spent can improve images from light polluted areas. My point is that a dark sky makes all the difference. The same equipment can not achieve as good of a result in a light polluted area as it can with a nice dark sky. The rest is left up to you. I am able to travel to a dark site maybe 8-10 times a year. I now have some better equipment that allow me to image much more often here from home achieving much better results. But nowhere near as good from a dark site. I enjoy the imaging process and I've been happy with my results.
I look back at my old images and laugh. Like the IOTD Andromeda. It's crap, but it made me very excited back then. I see people on here that have their 1st DSO image of part of Orion. I remember back when I got my 1st picture with color and some structure of Orion while hand holding a point and shoot through an eyepiece. I got more excited back then than I ever do now. I congratulate them and encourage them to have fun with the hobby. And give them advice if they want it. I've gotten tons of advice from forums, and still do.
Use your equipment and give it a try. See what you get. You are probably already set up for small objects like galaxies. And it's galaxy season now. You'll need very good guiding with a long focal length. M51 and M101 are in the perfect part of the sky right now. People get some great results from light polluted areas, but it could always be better from a non light polluted area. Look at the specs of the images you like and see how and where they were acquired. Find people with similar equipment to yours and see what their results are. They may be using a filter that makes a big difference to the end result. Boils down to sky, stuff and skills, with the sky being the most important. Otherwise professional observatories wouldn't be located where that are.
If you're happy with what you get that's great. If your not happy, you won't enjoy it. IOTD and APOD's are pretty high bars to set and will be difficult to achieve from a light polluted sky.
This is what I started with and was very excited when I took these.
I have to be honest, i am really enjoying what i am doing so far, it is just i learn fast but i do things very very slow and sometimes i never do until i make setup perfect first then try, and when i try and fail or see issues i just stop long again and try over again, so this is making me like i will never reach so far until very long time spent or wasted trying to perfect everything, and worse is if i wait to buy something and it will take time to afford it so i miss the opportunity of nice clear nights only because i am waiting and keep waiting and most of my results i am not satisfied, the moon is the only thing i am very happy about it, while with nebulae i am just already started as i figured out how to use guiding after 2 years of trying, imagine, 2 years only to make guiding work because of very stupid mistake, while others don't take more than 1 week or 1 month to make that guiding working.
Another thing is, others keep imaging even with less equipment and getting very nice amazing results and i keep dreaming to outperform their gear and results with more equipment, not saying i can't do things with my current, but because i started in photography and i did came to this situation before about keep upgrading and doing things with better equipment, it really did, so that i keep doing that into astro as well, i don't like to keep using like cheap affordable gear while some started with cheap and just not long they upgrade and keep upgrading and their results improving significantly while they are upgrading, some do it under darker skies and some under light pollution, and in my case i feel i can do nice in light pollution with more gear as it will ease my imaging, others don't mind to spend hours and weeks to do it for one target, but for me 1-2 nights is my maximum, so if i didn't make my equipment ready for that then i doubt that i will spend 4 months on 4 targets only and still not that good, to me that sucks really, others have patience for years even, and i know under LP it needs longer time than usual, so it is kind of that people with better gear in better skies do it faster or better that they can keep it and moving to more targets, while me i still struggle with one target which reflects on all other targets i try except planetary, so i don't know if light pollution will slow me down too much then i don't have that much long patience or i must improve my gear so it helps me under LP better way to keep me going.
What i want to say is very simple, if i can have a better gear or say high end then it will force me to keep going even under bad situations, sometimes the happiness or the satisfaction is with the type of gear we have and not what those gear can give us, i have Hasselblad, believe me i never produce one pro image out of it, but until today i am still happy that i have the name Hasselblad that so many still dream about it, a digital medium format, and also this is a bad habit in me, i look at so so many sites and people experiences, when i see someone started with something affordable nice and he upgrades/keep upgrading and others also then i always ask myself, if people are happy and skilled enough, why they upgrade, there is no another reason they upgrade if they are that good unless the current gear they have which is really good isn't satisfying them anymore or they look for more, so i really don't like to make myself not deserving while i can afford or not, and i learn always with anything, it is no point that i learn with $400-1000 telescope and not $6000 one because i don't know or it is too early, i can learn with $6000 if i can afford it even from beginning, and the worse if i spend time with something like $500-1500 telescope for a while and when i want to upgrade to premium or high end they say no not yet, so should i wait 10 years for example? I feel the only way i can be happy doing imaging under light pollution is by having super quality gear as much i can, if i didn't buy nice quality gear in photography back then i may stop photography almost after 4-5 years of starting no doubt, so now i am in the FORTH year of astro, there is improvement but not enough and it is too late while others already improved better in 1-2 years ago after me, so i hope you got my point, i envy you that you are happy with what you do regardless whatever you have and also drive or access to nice skies.
