291 replies to this topic

[caveman_astronomer]

None of my eyepieces have undercuts, what about them causes annoyance?

 

 

One of my focusers requires the barrel diameter to be 1.25 inches near the shoulder of the eyepiece. Undercuts decrease the barrel diameter at that critical spot. 

 

Others hate undercuts for other good reasons.

 

Back to LP....

[CrazyPanda]

Was just outside getting ready for some Jupiter imaging, and now I'm debating whether or not it's worth even buying a big dob in the future :/

 

I could just barely make out freaking Alcor. It's not even magnitude 4. When I first moved to my house, my night sky was pretty good. Not great, but it was rural and fairly dark. I've probably lost a full magnitude or more in just 3 years. I gets slightly better after midnight when a lot of business shut down extraneous lights, but there are still so many businesses with those ridiculous LED flood lights lighting up their whole parking lot and shining almost horizontally.

 

There are just 2 major clusters of light pollution which would be very easy and cheap for my town to fix, but it would require lighting regulation of private business, which is a can of worms that is unlikely to gain any traction. The town really should have a lighting code in general (the next town over does, but it's a purely residential town) so that the problem doesn't get worse. One ray of hope is that the major source of pollution closest to me (just a half mile away) is the local public high school. There are numerous parking lot lights, athletic field lights, and street lights, all of which are unshielded. Better management of those lights would improve the sky dramatically, and because it's public property, I can probably make a compelling petition to improve lighting management there.

Edited by CrazyPanda, 20 March 2017 - 09:51 PM.

[earlyriser]

I swear, these new LED lights are popping up like mushrooms. One my way home today, I discovered that a neighborhood gas station had replaced their previously overly intense lights (which were at least cutoff lights) with these monstrosities. They are aimed at 45 degrees to the horizontal. The attached photo was taken with an EV value of 7, which will give photographers an idea of how bright these are. A normal exposure for subjects under bright street lights would be an EV of 4. Bright interior shots at home are normally exposed at about an EV of 6. Each step up in EV equates to double the brightness.  You'll notice that even at EV 7, the areas illuminated by the lights are grossly over exposed. Complaints to the city to follow tomorrow when zoning enforcement is open.

Status Update: An order was issued by the city to bring this lighting into compliance with Section 1421-39 of the municipal code on May 3. On May 10, the owner responded that the lights would be directed down and shielded within 30 days. I will let you know if and when this happens.

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[caveman_astronomer]

 

I swear, these new LED lights are popping up like mushrooms. One my way home today, I discovered that a neighborhood gas station had replaced their previously overly intense lights (which were at least cutoff lights) with these monstrosities. They are aimed at 45 degrees to the horizontal. The attached photo was taken with an EV value of 7, which will give photographers an idea of how bright these are. A normal exposure for subjects under bright street lights would be an EV of 4. Bright interior shots at home are normally exposed at about an EV of 6. Each step up in EV equates to double the brightness.  You'll notice that even at EV 7, the areas illuminated by the lights are grossly over exposed. Complaints to the city to follow tomorrow when zoning enforcement is open.

Status Update: An order was issued by the city to bring this lighting into compliance with Section 1421-39 of the municipal code on May 3. On May 10, the owner responded that the lights would be directed down and shielded within 30 days. I will let you know if and when this happens.

 

It should be interesting to see what "compliance" looks like.

 

In the meantime, I have a solution that the owners can use to put themselves into compliance within 30 seconds, rather than 30 days.  It's called the light switch.

Edited by caveman_astronomer, 18 May 2017 - 12:29 PM.

[TareqPhoto]

If i am not scared to climb up to the rooftop of my house then i will take images of all directions and post here to show how nice lit is my city, or how bad light pollution is, i am sure there are worse out there maybe, but in all cases it isn't any good here, but who knows, maybe once i start to photograph the sky with my mount and scope i may see something different.

[TareqPhoto]

Here are images i've taken befor yesterday of our sky from my yard, not sure how do you rate my pain then

 

 

 

 

Done with Sony camera and Samyang 14mm lens, no filter, no tracking.

[bumm]

The Church of the Perpetually Lit Parking Lot.  Why bother to look at God's Universe when we've got ASPHALT?

                                                                                                              Marty

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[earlyriser]

The Church of the Perpetually Lit Parking Lot.  Why bother to look at God's Universe when we've got ASPHALT?

                                                                                                              Marty

Well, that's bloody awful. At least it's HPS.

[caveman_astronomer]

The Church of the Perpetually Lit Parking Lot.  Why bother to look at God's Universe when we've got ASPHALT?

                                                                                                              Marty

One only needs to add towers, dogs and a chain link fence to complete the effect.

[earlyriser]

These lights just went up about a week ago behind a building that has a list of building code violations a mile long. Not sure why the owners are spending money on new lights when they have roof leaks and broken windows. You can gauge the intensity by comparison to the HPS streetlight to the right. 5000K blue light specials, of course. 

 

I think I'll reach out to the owner to see if they are willing to work with me to add some shielding. Assuming that effort fails, the next step would be to raise the tenants' awareness of the potential health risks of nocturnal exposure to blue-rich lighting. Local ordinances don't really give me any leverage to get the owners to make some changes as far as I can tell. But maybe a tenant revolt would get their attention.

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Edited by earlyriser, 23 June 2017 - 06:47 AM.

[caveman_astronomer]

These lights just went up about a week ago behind a building that has a list of building code violations a mile long. Not sure why the owners are spending money on new lights when they have roof leaks and broken windows. You can gauge the intensity by comparison to the HPS streetlight to the right. 5000K blue light specials, of course. 

 

I think I'll reach out to the owner to see if they are willing to work with me to add some shielding. Assuming that effort fails, the next step would be to raise the tenants' awareness of the potential health risks of nocturnal exposure to blue-rich lighting. Local ordinances don't really give me any leverage to get the owners to make some changes as far as I can tell. But maybe a tenant revolt would get their attention.

That car with the broken window gives some idea why the residents probably won't object to the lights.  Not that the lighting would actually help, you understand.

[earlyriser]

 

These lights just went up about a week ago behind a building that has a list of building code violations a mile long. Not sure why the owners are spending money on new lights when they have roof leaks and broken windows. You can gauge the intensity by comparison to the HPS streetlight to the right. 5000K blue light specials, of course. 

 

I think I'll reach out to the owner to see if they are willing to work with me to add some shielding. Assuming that effort fails, the next step would be to raise the tenants' awareness of the potential health risks of nocturnal exposure to blue-rich lighting. Local ordinances don't really give me any leverage to get the owners to make some changes as far as I can tell. But maybe a tenant revolt would get their attention.

That car with the broken window gives some idea why the residents probably won't object to the lights.  Not that the lighting would actually help, you understand.

 

The abandoned cars add a nice touch, don't you think?

 

You are correct that the tenants probably don't mind the lights, but I figure I've got nothing to lose. In any case, I'll bet the tenants' relationship with the landlord is less than great based on the litany of problems the landlord has been cited for. Typically, when landlords get cited for failing to maintain a building, it's because one or more of the tenants has complained to the building department. 

[TareqPhoto]

So with your location or situation, can you see/view any star? bright stars? nothing? forget about planets, i only ask for stars.

[earlyriser]

From my back yard, under average transparency, I can see stars down to about 4.0 mag at the zenith. Under exceptional conditions, I can see down to about 4.8 mag. If new light installations like this keep popping up, however, I'd expect to lose 0.5 mag or so over the next few years.

[bikerdib]

My 61 year old back and hips are killing me after a wakeboard session a couple of weeks ago.  Oh, wait, maybe the OP was refering to a different kind of pain.

 

I live in a small town of 1200 people but I'm about 35 miles from Houston and the suburbs keep getting closer all the time, as close as 15 miles now.  I have a glow from them in the northeast direction about 35° high.

 

I run my own business from a home office so a while back an official from the city economic development corporation called me to see if there was anything they could do to help my business (and to see if they could get me to join).  I don't deal with the general public and told him so.  As we were talking he tried to promote the organization by telling me how he was instrumental in getting a string of 20 streetlights added to the main road through town.  I told him "so you are the one I need to send a nasty letter to".

[earlyriser]

My 61 year old back and hips are killing me after a wakeboard session a couple of weeks ago.  Oh, wait, maybe the OP was refering to a different kind of pain.

 

I live in a small town of 1200 people but I'm about 35 miles from Houston and the suburbs keep getting closer all the time, as close as 15 miles now.  I have a glow from them in the northeast direction about 35° high.

 

I run my own business from a home office so a while back an official from the city economic development corporation called me to see if there was anything they could do to help my business (and to see if they could get me to join).  I don't deal with the general public and told him so.  As we were talking he tried to promote the organization by telling me how he was instrumental in getting a string of 20 streetlights added to the main road through town.  I told him "so you are the one I need to send a nasty letter to".

It might be worth joining these types of groups just so that there is someone there to voice concerns over lighting projects. I've started going to my neighborhood community counsel meetings so I can get a heads-up on projects like that, and hopefully try to make sure that things like using full cut-off lights at least gets considered. I think we all need to get out there and be more vocal about what we want, even though that takes most of us out of our comfort zone. Nobody else is going to do it for us.

Edited by earlyriser, 23 June 2017 - 10:28 AM.

[TareqPhoto]

Hope things can go fine with you or anyway, i still think i have to fight in my backyard, soon i will give it a try and see.

[DoctorNoodle]

This is my neighbor's deck, around 50 feet from mine. Good news is he only turns on the lights when he lets his dog out in his back yard at night. Bad news is that sometimes he forgets to turn them off when he lets his dog back in.

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[wargrafix]

The Church of the Perpetually Lit Parking Lot. Why bother to look at God's Universe when we've got ASPHALT?
Marty

2 nuisances at the same time. Dannng.

[earlyriser]

So, a lot has happened with the light polluter that got me started on this thread. I don't want to take the time to give a complete blow-by-blow of how I got to where I am now, but suffice to say, I've offered to make and install some shields, he's agreed to let me do it, and I've gotten over my fear of heights. So, here is the before:

 

 

And here is the after (I failed to get the exact same angle, but the exposures are the same):

 

 

There is still some glare, but there is no uplight now. This is a test, and it remains to be seen if he'll let me do the rest of the lights, but it's progress. And let me tell you, those poles look a lot higher when you are at the top of a ladder screwing a light shield to a fixture.

 

[Michael Covington]

Take a picture with the exact same exposure as the previous one (look at the image properties to find out what the exposure was) so you can demonstrate that there is *more* light on the *ground*.   Then he'll be happy.

[earlyriser]

The shield on the light pointing to the right in the picture is this one:

 

 

 

I forgot to take a picture of the other one before I put it up, but it is a standard 45 degree cutoff.

[Michael Covington]

Here is my tale of woe (scroll down to "The sky is not your billboard"):
http://www.covington...ex.html#080830A

And here is the next chapter:
http://www.covington...dex.html#090811

And the resolution?  A new county ordinance against using searchlights for advertising.  The county commission decided that fad had gotten out of hand.  This isn't Hollywood... Searchlights are now banned by the same clause that bans lights that imitate police blue lights, traffic lights, etc.   (Well done!)

 

[earlyriser]

Take a picture with the exact same exposure as the previous one (look at the image properties to find out what the exposure was) so you can demonstrate that there is *more* light on the *ground*.   Then he'll be happy.

They are all EV4 (1/30 sec, F2.8, ISO 1600)

[caveman_astronomer]

Here is my tale of woe (scroll down to "The sky is not your billboard"):
http://www.covington...ex.html#080830A

And here is the next chapter:
http://www.covington...dex.html#090811

And the resolution?  A new county ordinance against using searchlights for advertising.  The county commission decided that fad had gotten out of hand.  This isn't Hollywood... Searchlights are now banned by the same clause that bans lights that imitate police blue lights, traffic lights, etc.   (Well done!)

 

Quote from your site:

 

      "The manager replied to my inquiry by asserting his right to advertise by shining lights over people's houses."

 

That's priceless and illustrates the all-too-common mindset we see among promoters and advertisers.  Whatever isn't expressly forbidden is allowed, I guess.

 

Thanks, you've given us hope.