Spent 4 months trying to shoot Andromeda from my driveway before I figured out my neighbor's porch light was the problem

Troy Roberts · 2026-10-06T10:05:06.035662+00:00

I got into astrophotography last year after seeing a picture of the Andromeda galaxy online and thinking, I can do that from my own yard in Fort Worth. So I bought a used DSLR and a small tracking mount and started shooting. For 4 months every clear night I was out there messing with focus and stacking software, and my pictures came out as fuzzy orange blobs. I blamed my lens, my tripod, the light pollution maps, everything except the real cause. Then one night my neighbor's motion light stayed on for a solid 20 minutes and I noticed my shots got even worse, and it clicked. That one light was bouncing off the haze and washing out the whole sky the entire time. I rigged up a cardboard shield on a broom handle, parked my scope behind my shed, and my next shot showed dust lanes in the galaxy for the first time. Now I check for stray light before I even set up. Any of you shooting from a suburb have a trick for blocking neighbors' lights without starting a fight?

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Spent 4 months trying to shoot Andromeda from my driveway before I figured out my neighbor's porch light was the problem | Astronomy Photos - Topic Shares