Light Pollution Mitigation Strategy: IRL RGB If you didn’t see it in In Reality, then it wasn’t there….

I have a strategy that works very well. For over 5 years now I blocked out the Condoland across the mote behind my house beyond our block wall with what is called a Wall Topper. A vinal fence extension. It worked great to block out their obnoxious area lighting. Wasn’t too terribly expensive.

Flash forward to the 6th occupiers of the next-door house and some ambiance lighting I helped my neighbor install for night pool parties. I think they may have had one in the years they lived there. They had rented to another family when they moved to San Antonio, TX. After one year the owners decided to sell the property and it forced the nice family renting the home to move. This caused the latest (6th family since we have lived here) to buy the home for a really exorbitant rate. They are not very nice at all. I did my best to be a good neighbor to them, but they like being as obnoxious as possible. As an example, they would turn on the strings of lights and leave them on until the solar batteries went dead. I tried to reason with them, got stupid excuses, and finally after his wife became concerned about my outdoor Telescope Camera spying on her, we decided to top the wall along their side. I told him I was going to and why. Two days after the company who put up the back wall topper gave us an estimate they came and installed the NW wall topper, effectively blocking their light pollution from my backyard. She was livid the day they came and installed the topper on our wall making it a matching 8-foot-high barrier between the yards.

At first, we were sitting out in our back yard and it felt like a Bin Laden compound. But we quickly grew to like the Good Neighbor Barricade. I told Anthony now I don’t care if they light up their yard like a prison. (They both work at the prison in the next town.)

And beyond the physical barriors, I use two different light pollution filters on my telescope in a filter drawer mounted to my camera on my telescope. Works great! And I can switch filters to try different blocking for different objects. Sometimes I will shoot a night with one filter, then switch to the other the next.

But that is my strategy for neighbors who have to be assholes. Here is two examples of my filters.

I would prefer to move. But Grandma just can’t do that. So I adapt.

📷 Fishhead Nebula 120s 100 Quad Cropped

https://app.astrobin.com/i/orzbv1/

📷 Fishhead Nebula 120s 100 Narrowband 3nm Cropped

https://app.astrobin.com/i/wh6o37/

Ahkilleux · Feb 12, 2026, 05:14 PM

Light Pollution Mitigation Strategy

Pixel Math: (L + RGB + IR) / (1-IR)


BTW it’d be REALLY great if Siril’s background extractor could use a mask. Like the inverse of an IR or HA or UV or other light pollution immune channel.

The idea is, instead of recording only in narrowband to evade light pollution, rather, record in broadband, but use narrowband as a reference or “truth” metric.

You get all the detail benefits of luminosity.
You get all the color benefits of RGB
And then you have a tool to help you attenuate the light pollution signal in a very, surgically precise way.

Essentially, if you didn’t see it in IR, then it wasn’t there….

But if you did, then keep your clarity.

Maybe this is already a thing. But I haven’t stumbled across it yet.

It pretty much is. Under my B8 skies I usually use near IR or narrowband Ha for the L frame. If you do you recombination in a photo editing program like Affinity (and you should) you can add the L frame as a totally controllable luminosity layer to your RGB frame. You can screen the stars back in as well if you’ve removed them.