Now let me start off by saying that I have no intention of operating a
175W MV lamp with the envelope smashed as the guy does in the video
you're about to see, but....

What fascinates me is that he seems to ignite and operate the MV lamp
without a ballast using a standard incandescent and capacitor. The
incandescent looks like it is wired in series with the bulb and the
capacitor in parallel. Here is where he explains it in the video:

https://youtu.be/WjKkgkbRSgY?t=73

The question is, I don't have a ballast either and I would like to try
out a standard 175 W MV lamp in my backyard briefly before investing in
a standard ballast. How would I go about calculating incandescent size
and capacitance? In the video, he is using 20 uF, but I think that's
for a much larger bulb if I'm not mistaken. Thanks.