Light pollution in B&W?

Hi guys, i was just wondering,when i take a long exposure photo from my house there HUGE amounts of light pollution after 30 seconds, so i was just wondering if i put on the black and white setting would it show up? and would it blur out the stars?(in a real wide field view of the sky)
Probably a stupid question but was justting thinking of ot!

Matthew, the only stupid question is the one you don't ask!

Unfortunately LP will show up on b&w images just as much as on colour. All you are doing is converting the same image to greyscale. You can do that in software afterwards anyway. However the LP may not be so noticable in B&W as the eye tends to detect colour changes more readily than scales of grey. Give it a try see what you think.

A better option would be to make a gradient map and subtract it out. I'm assuming you have image editing software capable of layers such as photoshop or paint shop pro or the gimp (which is free). Take a copy of the image as a separate layer. Blur that layer until all the stars look like very large diffuse blobs set the layer mode to 'difference' or 'subtraction' (depending on software. This works best on wide field star rich images such as constellation portraits.

PS if you want to post an image, I'll show you how this works.

Dave's right on that, B/W doesn't help with light pollution unfortunately.

You could also invest in light pollution filters Matthew, depending on how serious you want to get into astrophotography. But, they are coming down in price all the time, so, soon, it might not seemas much of an 'investment'.

Seanie.

Thanks guys! I was just wondering really i didnt think it would work! I have the latest version of Corel on my Laptop! Seanie ive been looking at filters and the like but i have been saving up the dosh for ALOT of stuff!

List:Barlow lens2x,3x,SPC900,Adaptor,filters(all kinds!),Eyepieces,focal reducer, APO refractor!
The lists goes on further!
Its really just deciding what order to get them in! For astrophotography, im gonna get a decent barlow and the spc900 and an IR filter!
Thanks Again guys!
Matthew

Matt,

Wodaski's New CCD Astronomy deals with gradient removal very well. I have a copy if you want to borrow it. TBH from our location it has to be done for all deep sky images but luckily it only takes a couple of minutes.

I'm using a 1.25" IDAS filter to help (which I've removed from it's cell and taped to the camera window), but I hear that the best choice is the Astronomik CLS for our level of light pollution. You're right though, the costs really do add up. A 2 inch IDAS is ridiculously expensive. In fact, all of the decent LP filters are crazily expensive at 2 inch

Trev