Where are your DSO's taken

Hi all,

I'm just curious where, in general, do you shoot your DSO's from? Planets can be shot from most anywhere, but in the old days (LOL!!) we had to go to very dark skies. Are these wonderful shots being taken from your backyards or do you go out away from cities to do this? I can see 4.5 mag stars in my backyard most of the time, so I'm curious if good DSO images are feasible from there?

Thanks and keep those beautiful images coming!
Paul Maxson

Paul Maxson said:

Hi all,

I'm just curious where, in general, do you shoot your DSO's from? Planets can be shot from most anywhere, but in the old days (LOL!!) we had to go to very dark skies. Are these wonderful shots being taken from your backyards or do you go out away from cities to do this? I can see 4.5 mag stars in my backyard most of the time, so I'm curious if good DSO images are feasible from there?

Thanks and keep those beautiful images coming!
Paul Maxson

If you can see 4.5, you can shoot DSO's, but it will take more work to remove gradients and longer exposure times. Filters won't do it--unless you are shooting narrow-band images, like Ha, etc. I used to shoot at mag 3.5 all the time and got some workable images.

I now shoot from my house where I have about mag 5 or 5.5 depending on the weather, and the results are great--and it's convenient.

Jeff

Hi Paul,
The answer is both... Here is one taken from my front yard in a very light polluted part of San Diego..
http://members.cox.net/ecdon/horsehead.html
It's very possible to take some quality images from less than ideal skies, but as the old saying goes, the darker, the better
Don Spencer

I'm considering going Ha for suburban imaging... light pollution is heavy here and gets in the way most of the time...

When I go out to The Everglades that's a totally different story... sweet dark skies!