Idea for improving darkness in suburbs

[OneOfOne (Trevor)]

Although the extension to my house is finished and it now blocks a lot of light from the neighbours and even from inside my own house, I have been thinking of other ways of making my backyard darker. The main problem is that I still get a lot of light from the houses at the rear of my place plus a couple of street lights.

Anyway, I thought of perhaps making some sort of viewing "corral" to block off surrounding lights. I would be interested to hear if anyone else has already experimented with this or something similar.

If I place some stakes into the ground in a sort of a circle like the shape below, leaving the stakes about 7 or 8 feet above the ground, then wrap black plastic around this frame I would expect it should be high enough to block out most of the surrounding lights (also block any wind). The black would also stop any other light from upsetting my night vision. I would hope that the result would be a much darker sky when standing inside the circle. The walls would not affect my viewing as trees and houses block anything from about 30 degrees or less.

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What do you reckon?

[sheeny (Al)]

G'Day OOO,

I don't think it will make your skies actually darker. But your plan to exclude direct light that affects your night vision is sound, so it may make the sky appear darker.

I have a similar problem at my home, but my back fence is adjacent a street light on an intersection. I'd have to build a light screen of considerable height to achieve what you're trying to do, and it would obscure probably 1/3 of the sky to the east... include the trees in my yard and I'm left with about 1/3 of the sky to view at zenith. Hence I drive out of town a lot, unless the moon is up and I'm going to view or image it.

Al.

[rogerg (Roger)]

I too think the only benefit would be to your night vision, but if you're doing visual work that's obviously important. Otherwise I'd use a due shield to keep the light out of the scope.

Another idea, left field: A water tank (tin or whatever with part of a side cut out for the door? Second hand tin one or something, where the bottom has rusted through or something? .. just an idea.

[Jarrod]

i've tried an old water tank as a way of improving night vision, it works really well! if you've got a nice out-of-the-way place to put an old tank in your yard, then try it! one problem though is that when you cut a section out to make the door the tank becomes rather wobbely, unless the ground and bottom edge of the tank are nice and flat. but this isnt a problem unless it gets very windy.

jarrod.

[astro_nutt]

I made up 2 sets of folding (hinged) panels..each panel was 1.2 metres wide x 1.5 metres high which stood on 0.5 metre legs..4 panels per set and hinged together accordian fashion which was then set up in either a hex or square shape...the sets were held together with velcro strips and one end left open as a door...each panel was made from 19 x 42mm pine..braced in each corner, painted black inside and white outside (just in case you decide to take it in the field) and covered with black garden plastic affixed with staples which had a dab of black texta..as for the scope..I use a piece of black fabric material to cover my head over the eyepiece whilst observing..a good quality skyglow or broardband filter helps too!
Cheers!