[Jasp05 (Aaron)]

Hi guys,

I'm looking into whether I should I just get a light pollution filter to help with my imaging from the backyard or whether a Ha filter would be better.

My skies are somewhere around a bortle 4-5 here in my town I think. (It's an orange zone on Dark site finder.com) But I can spot M8 with the naked eye most nights if the moon isn't around.

I have a car dealership across the street that uses strictly white lighting so I do have an excessive amount of "white" light versus a normal street with the usual Sodium vapor bulbs. I am shielded by the light as my house sits between the observatory and the lights, but I still imagine this impacts my imaging substantially.


I image with a modified Canon 550D. (one internal filter removed. not replaced with Baader glass or anything).

I am considering the Ha Filter over a light pollution filter as this will allow me to image during the times the moon is up. However I have read that these are not great to use on one shot colour cameras due to the RGGB Bayer matrix. (Only registers 1/4 of the signal of a mono camera with the same filter. so I have to increase exposure time a huge amount, or just deal with terrible signal to noise ratio in Ha subs). I generally image widefield so increasing the sub lengths to 10-15min is probably doable, but I know my DSLR will hate that from a temp point of view).

My current imaging setup is in my signature.

I would like your opinions on which would provide what benefits and why one would be more useful than the other?

If you have any preference towards brand, type - clip in/ screw in etc. I'm all ears.

Thanks in advance