Thursday, December 4, 2008

Light Pollution Filters

Trying to figure out what filters to get is like pulling teeth!! So many opinions on the net. And so much data as well. Mind numbing stuff. Anyways, after enough digging around I had sort of narrowed down to two: either the IDAS LPS P2 or the IDAS LPS V3. I eventually found this article on a spectrograph analysis of the various filters and also a live comparison on M42. Seems to indicate that the V3 is narrower than P2 (which is apparent from the product brochures) and might work better in situations where light pollutions contributors include high pressure sodium lamps. I live close to San Jose CA where, as you can see from the wikipedia entry, a conscious effort has been made to use only low pressure sodium vapor lamps, because of the proximity to Lick Observatory. As a result, at this point I am leaning towards the P2.

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