LenSatic wrote:
You'll get not an argument from me there, I'm just saying that you can use a telescope in the city and see most of the objects through it as you can in a dark-sky environment.
I'm sorry, but I disagree. You may be able to see a faint vestige of some of the BRIGHTER deep sky objects from light polluted city skies, but they are mere ghosts of what you can see from a true dark sky site. You have to be very selective in what you attempt to share with the public in an urban environment and your choices are severely limited.
My wife and I have a very respectable naked eye limiting magnitude of 6.5 from our front yard. We also travel to truly "dark sky sites" at least once a month for our club's monthly "Dark Sky Star Parties". We do extensive public outreach, multiple times a month, often under light polluted city skies in the Antelope Valley of California and surrounding environs (Lancaster, Palmdale....). While light polluted, the limiting magnitude in these communities is exponentially better than that in the LA metro area.
While I can share some, meaning a very limited selection, of the brighter Messier objects, galaxy, nebula, globular and open clusters with the public, the views are not nearly as satisfying as what is seen from a dark sky site and MANY of the objects are just plain not visible (or barely visible with averted vision). This is especially true of anything that is lower in the sky. Forget about seeing objects from some of the lesser known Catalogs, Herschel, Caldwell, SAO etc., in light polluted city skies.
