Intro to telescope visual light pollution filters, which are the best ones? UHC, NPB, O-III, H-Beta?
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- Опубліковано 5 лют 2025
- This is an intro to the basics of visual light pollution filters. I cover all the filters form Broadband, UHC, NPB, O-III, H-Beta. What brands are the best and what filter should you concider for your first one? Lets find out!
Buy on Amazon / Agena Astro to Support AVT-Astro:
Baader Planetarium 1.25" Moon and Skyglow Filter: amzn.to/2LDx9mQ
DGM Optics 1.25" NPB Nebula Filter: amzn.to/3nn5bsw
Baader Planetarium 1.25" Oxygen III Nebula Filter: amzn.to/2LiDCU6
Orion 1.25-Inch H-Beta Eyepiece Filter: amzn.to/3q0ccBi
Filters on Agena Astro: bit.ly/3tKOsIL
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I liked the editing! The changes of brightness around the 5 minute mark and onwards were perfect! Helpful video, too!
Thanks!
Thanks for making this!! Very helpful.
Glad to help, my pleasure!
I love the O3 for planetary nebulas. I'm in heavy LP and often I can only get glimpses of some dimmer ones with averted vision, or can't see them at all. Pop in the O3 and there they are, brighter and I can look at them straight on.
Thanks for reviewing the Baader Moon and Sky Glow. I've been thinking about it and now I'm sold.
Glad to help! And yes OIII is awsome for nebula even from a dark sky site!
Hi Vlad, do you have suggestion about filter for dimming the full moon down when it is too bright? One of those or just a polarizer?
I personally use and highly recommend a variable polarizing filter: amzn.to/3IOUYmO
That way you can make it as dim as you like based on what telescope/power you are using.
@@AVTAstro Thanks!
This is a great topic. I don’t blame you for resisting making it. Deep topic.
Yes it sure is! This is of course just scratching the surface for someone new to the hobby. At one point I started kind of in-depth comparison between filers that I was going to post on my blog but kind of put the effort on pause as it was just so much testing and info to compile;)
I seem to always fall back on your advice 😀
Well glad to hear you find it useful👍
Can you compare 5inch newt to a 4inch apo or achro on planets/dso for visual. This is probably useful for potential new buyers of a telescope as price wise and aperture,it can be a hard choice deciding what to pick incl mounts,az,eq,dob. Thanks
Between such a close aperture reflector and APO there is 100% no doubt that the APO will win on everything hands down! Why? no central obstruction and likely overall a nicer made overall OTA!!!
Another great helpful video 🙏🏼 I purchased both 92 degree ES and various 86 degree ES based on your reviews and now I’ll be getting a set of these filters. Thank you. Did you say you are in Central Oregon? I’m in Portland.
Hey, good to hear that you found it helpful! I'm about an hour north of PDX. I am a member of the RCA though!
I have the 2 inch Baader moon and skyglow filter. Will the Lumicon filters thread into the same eye pieces as the Baader or is it different size threads?
Hi, yup the threads are the same👍
As a beginner over a year ago I bought a cheap $55 UHC broadband CLS filter all rolled into one. My review of the filter was "What is this supposed to do?" because it just dimmed everything, like putting on my sunglasses to view the stars. That is until I looked at Jupiter with it and the cloud bands just stood out and even the Giant Red Spot did to when it came around. So I kept it just for Jupiter and the full Moon with a polarizing filter it worked for. It seemed to give some depth to the Moon's surface if you didn't mind the bluish tint.
I learned my lesson, don't buy filters based on price alone.
Emm no that's not the answer. For any light pollution filters u need up to 130mm of aperture and i wasn't found any good filter for observation not yet all need large exposure to see something.
@@oetm6823 It was a 150mm 6" Newtonian.
@@MountainFisher 🤷🏻♂️ large exposure
@@oetm6823 Yes, many filters are for larger apertures or long exposure photography., but I was new at this at the time and learned. Joining an astronomy club was the best thing I could have done.
@@MountainFisher astronomy clubs and GOTO 😆
thank you for the video! the issue i have is the various neighbors that all use LED lights, i need to target that!
Yeah you and me together. LED's are really bad...
I see your filters are 2 inch. I assume you are using those on low power eyepieces. Do you find it better to use the filters on lower power eyepieces rather than more medium power eyepieces? Reason I ask is that it seems to my experience that increasing magnification seems to make faint things more visible.
Hi, excellent question! In general yes the reason that I own 2" filters is so that I can use them with my widest eyepieces: ES 40mm 68* & ES 25mm 100*. There are a handful of objects that really need that ultra wide FOV and necessary filter to see best like the North American Nebula, Vail Nebula, California Nebula... You really need to be at a dark sky site to make these low power observations possible. But you are correct that high powers do really help on some objects that filters work well on especially planetary nebulas. I use the same filters if I use a high power 1.25" eyepiece by screwing them onto the front of the 2" diagonal.
@@AVTAstro I guess a 100° eyepiece would be best on deep sky objects. That 25mm you would be able to get close and still see the whole thing.
Hi. Which filters do you recommend for EAA?
All I use is an IR filter for EAA. Issue is that for EAA your usually looking at all kinds of different objects but filters only really work on nebulas.
@@AVTAstro I see. I was going to get a filter wheel with different filters, so I could see as much as I can. I live in a bortle 9 area :-( I see that astrophotographers use filters in heavy light polution areas and get great results and therefore thought that it would be important to get filters as well for EAA, as it's similar. Any comments/suggestions? Or you still recommend only an IR filter. Can you do a video on EAA in general?
In you have a filter wheel than its a bit of a different story depending on how long of exposures you are doing. If all you are limited to is 5sec exposures a light pollution filter is not going to help on anything but the brightest nebulas. If you can get into the 15sec+ range than something like the Optolong L-eNhance( amzn.to/30RtMNe ) would be a good choice!
A video on EAA has been on my to-do list for a while. I think I need to get to it! It's just kind of a deep subject so I think I have been avoiding it... ;)
@@AVTAstro Thanks for the info. You can do a few videos/episodes on it! I'm sure many people will appreciate it :-)
Thanks for the very informative video! Btw, you sound a bit like the guitarist Ace Frehley from the band KISS. If you work on your accent a bit, you can probably make some money impersonating him or perhaps reading out his autobiography to make the audio book version of it.
Glad to liked the video! That's a first of me hearing about the voice similarities 🤣
I really like using a CPL filter for light pollution it doesn't really change the colour of what you're looking at, and just cuts the glare out of the scope that u get from street lights, it was in a filter set I got 2nd hand new off ebay wich I got for the moon filter, I use it on my table top scope wich I take to my brothers and he lives near Cambridge City centre and on my 76/700 I take to work I think its good at that job not much money so worth a go if its a problem for u 🤷♂️ hope it helps someone 😀
Very cool, thanks for the tip! I really like the filters that are more color neutral as well.
Thanks man!
Glad to help👍
Stay away from cheap filters? It filters or it doesn't filter. It has a spectrum for its performance. Regardless of price, bandwidth performance is bandwidth performance.
That's like saying that a telescope magnifies or does not and nothing else matters. The optical polish is important on a filter as well as the transmission amount. A lot of cheap filter will produce a ghost image because of the stated above. There IS a difference in the cheap and expensive filters. An easy to see diffrencee actually.
@@AVTAstro The way optical glass is made in say a glass factory in Japan is they run a batch of glass through and cut and polish it. There might be small distortions and getting it perfect is costly, so they don't do that. What they do is they grade the batch as it comes off the production line. So the top glass best in spec goes into a Nikon. The middle grade goes into a Cannon. The low end gets branded in Soligor. Same factory. So you do want a brand name, but you start by buying the cheapest for the flat glass filters as the tech is so minimal to make it right, and you see how it works. If it works, you buy more of that brand. Svbony, for example works just fine at a cost effective price.
@@AVTAstro Performance is not just optical glass quality. You need the IR spectrum of any filter published by the retailer to know exactly how it behaves not blah-de-blah how it behaves. The exact behavior of Svbony IRCut filter for example, is posted with their ad on EBay for a reason. It tells you that it cuts off light above 650 nm. It tells you the efficiency of the filter. That is the specs for it. How it behaves on sky features is subjective opinion.
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Thanks for the constructive feedback!!! hahahahahahaha...