I spent much of last night doing astrophotography. Below is my most successful capture. The object is M15 – a globular cluster in the constellation Pegasus. The upper image represents the full field of the 130mm astrograph; the cluster is in the center. The bottom image is the same object cropped to show some of the detail in the cluster. The image consists of a stack of 36, 60-second frames. Even with a light pollution suppression filter, the remaining ambient light overwhelms the sensor after 60 seconds.
The problems are unshielded light fixtures that illuminate the skies, and full-spectrum light sources such as LEDs. There is no way “filter out” the entire spectrum, as it were. Frames of longer exposure taken from a dark site would reveal much more detail. Alas, we work with what we have.
