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Two weeks of clear skies in Flagstaff took my Andromeda shot from a blurry smudge to something I actually want to print
Back in February I was shooting from my driveway in Phoenix and M31 came out as a gray blob with no dust lanes no matter what I tried. I drove up to Flagstaff for a weekend at the end of March, stacked 42 ten-minute subs there, and suddenly the dust lanes and both companion galaxies just showed up. For people who shoot from light polluted areas, how far do you usually have to drive before the difference is worth the gas?
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the_ben28d ago
Check the moon phase before you even bother driving anywhere, because that matters way more than most people realize. I've done the drive from Phoenix up to the Cherry Road area and even a bright gibbous moon will wash out your dust lanes just as bad as the city glow does. What actually helped me was looking at a light pollution map and finding the closest Bortle 4 zone instead of always chasing Bortle 2, since the jump from my driveway to Bortle 4 got me 80 percent of the way there for a 45 minute drive. Also pay attention to which direction the target is relative to the Phoenix dome, because M31 sits northeast and you're shooting right toward that glow if you stay south of the city. Driving north past Cordes Junction or up toward Payson puts the whole metro behind you and that alone can be worth more than another hour of driving. Flagstaff is great but honestly the seeing up there can be rough in spring, so don't assume every trip north will give you the same result.
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