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After living in Alaska for several years, I don't really think that is how cities would look at all. With just stars and even the aurora borealis, it is incredible how pure darknesss looks. I really didn't know how much light pollution effected the sky until living there, but even in small towns and other less populated areas the light from various sources changes the skyline.
I doubt I'm the only one who read the article with the hope of finding some new technique to remove light pollution from images to show off the stars... and was mildly disappointed to find out the beautiful images were just cut-n-paste jobs (albeit outstanding ones). I'm wondering what kinds of techniques exist for removing light pollution? Spectrum sensitivity? Spectrum filtering on exposure? Post processing?
Tucson, Arizona uses sodium vapor lighting for all its street lighting specifically to allow the nearby observatories easily filter the light pollution.
If you were in New York City during Hurricane Sandy, in the lower half, at least, you got a taste of this first hand. I had to walk home into the unpowered section of Manhattan every night from work. I took some photos during that time. Unfortunately, as it was still overcast, we never did get a chance to see the stars from downtown Manhattan: http://tumblr.eyeheartnewyork.com/post/37636219209/i-finally...
If you were in New York City during Hurricane Sandy, in the lower half, at least, you got a taste of this first hand. I had to walk home into the unpowered section of Manhattan every night from work. I took some photos during that time. Unfortunately, as it was still overcast, we never did get a chance to see the stars from downtown Manhattan: http://tumblr.eyeheartnewyork.com/post/37636219209/i-finally...
Perhaps there's some combination of moon-lit conditions that would produce that effect, but it sure doesn't look right to me.
I doubt I'm the only one who read the article with the hope of finding some new technique to remove light pollution from images to show off the stars... and was mildly disappointed to find out the beautiful images were just cut-n-paste jobs (albeit outstanding ones). I'm wondering what kinds of techniques exist for removing light pollution? Spectrum sensitivity? Spectrum filtering on exposure? Post processing?
Tucson, Arizona uses sodium vapor lighting for all its street lighting specifically to allow the nearby observatories easily filter the light pollution.
After living in Alaska for several years, I don't really think that is how cities would look at all. With just stars and even the aurora borealis, it is incredible how pure darknesss looks. I really didn't know how much light pollution effected the sky until living there, but even in small towns and other less populated areas the light from various sources changes the skyline.
Whew. I was wondering if I was the only one who has been out in the mountains and other rural areas, but have never seen a night sky like these.
If you were in New York City during Hurricane Sandy, in the lower half, at least, you got a taste of this first hand. I had to walk home into the unpowered section of Manhattan every night from work. I took some photos during that time. Unfortunately, as it was still overcast, we never did get a chance to see the stars from downtown Manhattan: http://tumblr.eyeheartnewyork.com/post/37636219209/i-finally...
An interesting difference between your photos and the renditions linked here is that the buildings in yours are black silhouettes, while the ones here are fairly well lit up. That's the first thing that stuck out at me: if there is no light pollution, what is lighting the foreground buildings? If you look at the Hong Kong photo, for example, it looks like there is a ton of light pollution: all the buildings, plus the…
If you were in New York City during Hurricane Sandy, in the lower half, at least, you got a taste of this first hand. I had to walk home into the unpowered section of Manhattan every night from work. I took some photos during that time. Unfortunately, as it was still overcast, we never did get a chance to see the stars from downtown Manhattan: http://tumblr.eyeheartnewyork.com/post/37636219209/i-finally...
Makes me want to go out to the middle of nowhere for a while, just to experience the Real World (TM) again; it's been a long time.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with light pollution is that the light bounces off of water, dust, and smog in the atmosphere, and back down into your eye/camera. So when you look up, the sky isn't darker, it's a lot brighter! You would need a way to subtract the extra light.
Theoretically, it would basically be just a matter of subtracting the "general" light background, and then apply a deconvolution to the remaining "signal" to reduce blurry areas of light into point-like stars. However, deconvolution is one of those things that's great in theory, but almost impossible to pull off in practice, except under extremely controlled circumstances. And in this case, considering just how much…