The "Milky Way" test of a boondocking site

profdant139 wrote:
Len, here is how bad the light pollution is in LA...

BTW, learning and teaching the basics of amateur astronomy in Los Angeles is actually helped by the light pollution. For the most part, only the main stars that outline the constellations are visible making learning them much easier than, say, here is SE AZ. I have to take a star chart out with me, now, to find some of the smaller, less obvious ones.

LS

profdant139 wrote:
Len, here is how bad the light pollution is in LA -- after the Northridge earthquake 20 years ago, the power went out over most of the San Fernando Valley at 4 am. Everyone rushed outside, of course. After the initial shock, a significant percentage of the 911 calls were about "those weird lights in the sky" -- many people had never seen the stars.

I know. I was there. (We just recently moved here from Hermosa Beach.) We had a power outage, too, but it was foggy that morning.

If you haven't done so already, you might check out the local astronomy clubs. There's one in Costa Mesa. I was a member of the LAAS for several years and we had monthly star parties at their facility in Lockwood Valley, near Mt. Pinos.

http://www.griffithobs.org/skylocal.html

Anza-Borrego is also a very good viewing area and probably closer to you.

Pat

I have processed hundreds of photos using Photoshop and discovered that the four most important things to start with when changing/enhancing/correcting image accuracy and quality from a digital camera are these (I'm not considering the RAW camera mode, here):

1) Use as high a resolution digital camera as you can and use it's maximum resolution setting for your photos.

2) Use Photoshop in a dimly lit room ... what light you do need in the room should come from daylight spectrum lamp bulbs.

3) View images on only a calibrated computer monitor during use of Photoshop.

4) An early Photoshop image modification step to use when adjusting an image should be use of the "leveling" controls - or in the majority of cases just use of "auto-leveling" gives good results.

What to do in Photoshop with images in addition to the above can take years and/or many hours to master and are probably beyond the scope of this forum's patience. Top notch eyes with off-the-chart color perception capabilities are assumed. My DW's color perception abilities are "light years" better than mine and I call upon her often to help with Photoshop tweaks!

Len, here is how bad the light pollution is in LA -- after the Northridge earthquake 20 years ago, the power went out over most of the San Fernando Valley at 4 am. Everyone rushed outside, of course. After the initial shock, a significant percentage of the 911 calls were about "those weird lights in the sky" -- many people had never seen the stars. It takes a long, long time (literally two or three hours!) to drive from where I live (coastal Orange County) to a place so dark that the Milky Way can be seen. I get to see the stars so rarely that we have planned a few camping trips in order to be way out in the middle of nowhere during the dark of the moon, so that the moon does not wash out the stars.

For folks who are trying to take star shots of your boondocking RV, let me pass along another editing tip I just picked up, courtesy of Camperfamily. (The photo almost certainly has to be processed through editing software, such as Lightroom or Photoshop, as mentioned earlier in this thread.) Camperfamily's trick is this: instead of just cranking up the exposure (which is what I had been doing, and which resulted in some odd colors in the sky), selectively crank DOWN the intensity of the colors, which gives a more natural "dark sky" look to the photo.

For example, check out this re-worked version of a shot I posted above, a few days ago -- if you look at both of them, I think you will see that the newer version looks much less artificial. It is still far from perfect, but it is better, I think:



Way to go, Camperfamily! I should add that I watched a bunch of youtube instructional videos on how to use Lightroom for star photos, but no one else (as far as I can recall) came up with the counterintuitive solution of reducing the saturation and luminance of the colors.

Yep.

Also maybe like looking up at the night sky from Los Angeles and then RV'ing to one of my favorite boondocking places - even further from LA deep into the Oregon outback north of Plush - and looking up at the night sky. Fantastic.

pnichols wrote:

I just had one eye's cataract removed and what a wonderful thing to see the night sky one half way into all it's glory. :C

Probably like moving from Los Angeles to SE Arizona, ain't it? :W

LS

You guys need to be a bit older before you can look back and really appreciate what you have now.

The night sky used to look best au naturel to me also, up to a couple of years ago when it began to look best only when tweaked in Photoshop.

I just had one eye's cataract removed and what a wonderful thing to see the night sky one half way into all it's glory. The second eye is next month and I can hardly wait for a complete au naturel view again. Our residence is just high enough in the mountains to view wonderful skies from the back deck. :C

profdant139 wrote:
(An air mattress is pretty good, too, but it is not so easy to sip a beverage when prone!)

Oh, it's doable; trust me. (Don' ask me how I know. ;)) I just tend to fall asleep.

LS

Len, that is a great point! My favorite piece of astronomical equipment is a reclining chair. (An air mattress is pretty good, too, but it is not so easy to sip a beverage when prone!) One one of the best parts of camping is the opportunity to just hang out under a spectacular night sky for a long time, listening to the distant coyotes and the wind in the sagebrush.

But photos have their place, too -- they can trigger memories of those particular nights. And because of the invention of digital photography, we no longer have to tuck them away in drawers or albums -- we can look at them more often and more easily than we did in the days of film, without having to cover our walls with prints.

I have to say, after 37 years in amateur astronomy, that there are photographs and there are memories. If you are into pretty pictures, fine. They certainly look good on the wall. If you want to experience it totally and burn it into your being, your eye and brain are the best medium.

I'm, basically, a deep sky guy...galaxies, globular clusters, etc. I do like outer planet lunar eclipses, also. My wife and I went to Cabo San Lucas for the '91 total eclipse of our moon. We went with an astronomy club tour. The club had it's own photographer so most of us did not take any gear. We sat on the beach watching it start to finish. A few weeks after getting home, we received the professional photos. We looked at them a few times and showed them to our friends and then put them in a drawer. The memory of that day is far more precious and deep.

You can take pictures of roses, just make sure you occasionally stop to smell them. ;)

LS