M86 with neighbours

I am very satisfied with the result because I have spent some nights outside recently without any useful pictures, because autoguiding wasnt’ working properly. I had to change some settings and now works again.

On the beginning of summer 2008 I figured out that the situation from the point of light pollution from my backyard is so bad that I need the solution. On the web I found some filters that suppress the light pollution but no one good review of them.

In the end I decided for IDAS LPS filter of Hutec. Because I was pretty sure I will be using just for astrophotography I decided for front-filter (look at this figure) which can be placed directly in the camera’s body so I can use it with lenses also and not just with the telescope. The version of filter is P2, that means that is the most suitable for astrophotography in prime focus.

The filter arrived on June and costed approximately 250 eur here in Europe, in USA it’s a bit cheaper. The first impression was something like: “250 eur for such a piece of glass?!??”. But after a first-light I changed my opinion. It is worth every single pennie! It works just the best for me, my backyard turned to the very good astrophotography place. It has no affect to sharpness of the image. I use it with my Canon 350D (Baader mod.) and also both sample pictures are captured with this equipment. The telescope was William Optics SuperAPO 80/480 with TeleVue reducer/flattener 0.8x. The picture without filter is out of focus because when I removed the filter I didn’t refocused. Anyway, it represents the affect of filter. Both pictures are captured at the same settings: f/4.8, ISO1600, 120s, RAW, WB(2850, -30), imported and exported with Lightroom.

The image without Hutech IDAS LPS filter

The image with Hutech IDAS LPS filter

It’s quite obvius what the filter does.

I have also measured the Mean of these two pictures. The median value for the picture without IDAS LPS is 118 whereas the median for picture with IDAS LPS filter is 52.

That’s all, hope that this article will help someone to decide what to buy or not to buy.