Light Baffles

When we lived in Florida I spent a lot of time stargazing as it was always warm and very convenient. One of the problems experienced by most stargazers is light pollution.

I remedied this using the following method that may help some of you.

I started out with a bunch of PVC piping, a few fittings, and some tarps as you can see below.

I selected these specific tarps as they have a draw string which allowed me to put the PVC pipes into an already sewed in channel...

Here is the first panel finished. As you can see the corners of these tarps are opened making assembly easy. For the cross member all I had to do was cut a small slit into the channel and then I used some duct tape to prevent any tearing.

And here is a close up....

Once the four panels were completed I just used tie-wraps to secure them to each other.
You can see that they provided plenty of space even for my 12" Dob! They make excellent light baffles, and are very inexpensive. If you are into astronomy, it's starting to warm up.....and if you have been letting light keep you from observing, give this solution a try!