SONY cameras still eat stars

This is just another post to confirm how human beings are susceptible to ongoing delusions.

6-7 years ago, Sony looked like the new "logical choice" for DSLR astrophotography.   They released incredibly sensitive cameras with the A7 series.   At Van Vleck, Charles had an A7S that basically acted like a noisy night-vision camera.   Compared to Canon and Nikon, these new A7S's and A7R's felt like they were two generations ahead of everyone.  12800 ISO on the Sony often looked better than 6400 ISO images in online test images from Canon cameras.  

I remember on Cloudynights, there was a lot interest and excitement about these cameras.  Some people were doing mods to replace the built in filters with astro-friendly filters and companies like LifePixel were offering services to make the cameras more astro-friendly.

But around 2016, people who were doing astrophtography with the the A7 series noticed an interesting problem.  The files produced seemed to have less noise and stars than expected.   The frames of the night sky were unusually "clean".   This is one of those blatant examples of how one person's benefit is another person's problem.   It seemed to have happened after a firmware update.

People started recognizing this "problem" and Petapixel published an article about it.

https://petapixel.com/2017/05/04/star-eater-issue-no-longer-recommend-sony-cameras-astrophotography/

When you went on general camera forums, there were the expected acerbic and "toxic" exchanges between those who cared and those who didn't.  Obviously, if you only shot the camera during the day, then you would never see this issue.   And most people who own cameras only rarely dabble in nighttime photography.  It felt like a situation where the minority of users who used the A7's for astrophotography didn't matter.  Sony was silent on the issue and though it would have been really easy to add a setting in the camera to turn off "star eating", they consistently chose not to.   In fact, there are apparently some documented email exchanges with Sony engineers who bascially said they didn't see any problem.  

It's "interesting" how when a major corporation decides there's no problem, then there's no problem.

Sony basically said STFU to maybe 10- 50,000 potential buyers.  I'm pulling those numbers out of my ass but I think there were plenty of DSLR astrophotographers who were willing to jump ship to Sony around 2015-2016.  

At some point, there was even an online petition in the hopes of getting Sony to recognize the problem.

https://www.change.org/p/sony-remove-star-eater-en

Nope, no change.  

Part of the reason for the disappointment of Sony's response is the fact that both Nikon and Canon have raw files that don't "cook the raw image" in the way that Sony's cameras do.  And I think that goes to a second concern that Sony's images are less representative of what the sensor is detecting.   All cameras do some processing to the raw file before it gets to your camera memory card or the computer.  But Sony seems to be saying they want the user to have less control over the image.  Purely from a marketing perspective, this is not a bad thing.  But it does paint a picture of a dumber consumer/photographer.

We all understand that governments (or govenmental systems) create a certain type of ideal citizen and population.   But we don't want to acknowledge that corporations can exert a similar effect on populations as well.  

In the meanwhile, both Canon and Nikon (to my suprise) released cameras that were astro-friendly.  This was a kind of nod to the enthusiast and DSLR-astrophotography community.  If you think about the financial loss from Canon and Nikon on these extremely specialized cameras, then that "nod" was really substantial.  

Again, Sony has not responded with even a firmware update to give you the option to have more control over their aggressive noise reduction routines.

And what made things conspicuously stranger is another article by Alan Dyer that declared that Sony cameras no longer ate stars.

https://petapixel.com/2018/06/08/sonys-star-eater-problem-has-been-defeated-in-the-a7-iii/

Alan Dyer is a name within the astrophotography community.  But if you look closely at his publications, you will see mainly milky-way vistas, star-trail images, aurora images, etc.  They are all beautiful and wonderful pictures but there are very few telescopic targets.   Of the telescopic targets that he shoots, we are only seeing the brightest and most dramatically rendered.  Again, nothing wrong with that per se.  It's just that the perspective of someone who doesn't shoot targets known primarily by NGC or IC designations isn't the most suited for judging subtle problems like the disappearance of small stars in an image.   (I get this is debatable since there are some awful imagers out there who like their out of focus, overprocessed blobs that they call galaxies or nebulae.)

What's even more strange is that the comparison images in Dyer's article clearly show that the Sony is rendering less stars than the Nikon or Canon cameras.   Here's is a quote:

"As the images below show, there is a very slight one-pixel-level softening that kicks in at 4 seconds and longer but it did not eat or wipe out stars..."

Two out of his three images in this same article show otherwise.   Yes, it's better than it was in the A7R series but to conclude and declare that the A7III is no longer eating stars is just plain wrong.

 

Jove in Methane

Taken about 9:14 pm on October 9th.  Jupiter was really low... around 20 deg above the horizon.  Seeing was actually okay down in the muck.

Video was 2 min at a measley 6 fps.  362 out of 756 frames were stacked in Autostakkert.  Shot with the Baader Methane filter, QHY 462C, TV 2x barlow.  Footage was really noisy.

Not sure about the weird squiggly bright area in the south.  It's probably a stacking defect. 

Willman-Bell is Closed

 

WTF !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was just about to order 4 books this week.

uRaNuS

I only tried collecting data twice on Uranus.  The first time I tried in Firecapture with RGB filters and the video looked awful.   On 10/4/2020 around 4 am, there was some predicted excellent seeing so instead of shooting Mars late as it dropped into western skies, I turned the scope to Uranus.   

Not much detail except for a darkening trend to the upper right.  When I stretched the image, there is also a hint of a band that demarcates the darker area from the light area.  But it's such a faint band that it could be confused for noise.   

This is a 2 min exposure through the QHY 462C, TV 2x barlow, C11.  In theory I could derotate this in WinJupos as I took 7 sets.   But I don't know...

Saturn from 08/13/2020

 First RGB planet image.  No derotation yet.

60 seconds each in Optolong RGB filters, TV 2x barlow, C11 scope with QHY 290m camera using the ZWO filter wheel.  

Hm...  this data set is one of seven RGB runs taken in sequence.  Hopefully, the de-rotated image shows more banding and maybe a hint of the polar hexagon.

Not as clean as I'd like but it "seems" to be cleaner than the color data from the 462C camera.  Also, there's a slight magenta vibe on the planet's east and west sides which I may address later.

After I process a few more RGB's, I'll see if I can do a comparison between the color vs mono cameras.

Compare with an image from the 462C back in August:  https://astrokowang.blogspot.com/2020/08/saturn-on-88-in-color.html

Better Mars data

 This is just another note to myself...best Mars captures:

8/16 firecapture

9/24 sharpcap

(9/28 sharpcap from 8" f/6)

9/30 firecapture

10/04 sharpcap

1013-10/14 firecapture

10/17 firecapture

Comparison of QHY 462C with and without the included UV/IR filter

The other night when I realized I hadn't been shooting with UV/IR, I eventually added the filter.   The seeing had deteriorated noticeably as Mars was right over the outbuilding which hadn't been cooled.

The unfiltered 462C is to the left and the filtered version is to the right.

The first thing you might notice is the color shift.  The unfiltered color actually looks close to what I think Mars should look like.  I think it could be a little redder, but overall I like the appearance more than the greenish-lime vibe (early Homer Simpson?) of the right with the filter.  

The other thing which is hard to distinguish is that the northern polar ice is evident on the right (more so with video) and only hinted at without filtration.  The small south pole is also a bit more obvious with UV/IR.  

With albedo features, I think the filtered version is also more contrasty.  Though the UV/IR filter did require that I change the shutter speed with higher gain (276 vs 210) and slightly longer exposures (3.75 vs 2.32 milliseconds).

As far as clouds, the UV/IR filtered version hints at clouds to the west.  The non-filtered version seems devoid of clouds.

 

Maybe I should stick with monochrome with RGB filters.

Detailed Autostakkert Tutorial

Just an FYI...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIjXmRh1DE0

The person writing this blog is stupid

Where do I start? 

I guess with this picture.  So, I've been shooting with the QHY 462C for the last two nights.   I was sorta complaining to Anthony that the seeing hasn't been great because it's that situation where the image of Mars (or Jupiter, etc) might be relatively still but lacks detail and contrast.   I've conjectured that there might be dust or some sort of high-altitude turbulence that doesn't really manifest itself as shaking but just poor detail.   While I hold that the latter still might be the case, when I decided to shoot IR Mars to get a little more detail, I found the above case holding a filter.  It took me awhile to register what I had seen.

The first mistake I made was that I took out the Methane filter thinking it was the 850nm+ long pass filter.  No big deal, I took 5 x 3 min shots of Mars in Methane and I think I was shooting around 24 fps because the filter is basically narrowband, letting in very little light.

Now, IF I had been shooting the last couple days with the UV/IR filter on, I would have had to remove it to shoot in Methane.  I just screwed on the Methane filter and started shooting.   Now, when I went back inside to get the 850nm longpass filter, I noticed the UV/IR case above was holding a filter.   Huh?  

At that moment, I realized that I had been shooting without the UV/IR filter for the past two days collecting at least 700 GB of data on Mars and Jupiter.  What?!?!   Without the UV/IR filter, everything is washed out and slightly out of focus.  

The other thing that didn't register was that I wasn't seeing any cloud detail on Mars and the south polar cap was non-existent most of the time.  

What to do with all this bad data?  😨😨

(Later: Glancing at older footage of Mars through the 462C, it seems obvious there were times I did NOT use the UV/IR filter.   Holy crap.)

I started this evening with a cheap cooling solution consisting of a bag of ice on the back of the OTA.  I let it cool for about 40 minutes in this configuration.

Looks like my telescope had a hangover from the previous night of "bad seeing", ie shooting without the UV/IR blocking filter.  The reason I set up so early was to catch Jupiter showing the red spot.  In my dozen attempts this season, I've either missed the red spot or it revealed itself in awful seeing conditions.  

When I started shooting Jupiter there was a lot of turbulence.  The back plate of the SCT was much colder than any other part of the OTA.  I think it would have been better to have not used ice at all or just let it cool the back for maybe 15 minutes total.  The metal on the front of the scope (around the corrector) was easily 5-6 degrees warmer than the back.

Because I dropped and broke my 2x Televue barlow yesterday (sigh), I had to use the Siebert barlow which has tons of dust and tiny particles in it.  (Poor QA) Before I started to shoot Jupiter, I had to create a flat.   Because I felt rushed (and this a big reason why I dropped the barlow), didn't use my spike-a-flat light source.  Instead I had the lame idea of using the quickly darkening sky.  But the sky was pretty dark 15 minutes after sunset.  When I pointed the telescope up and adjusted shutter speeds and gain, I found that I had to use a lot of gain to get the histogram in a good place.  I had done this exact same thing the previous day and while the flat worked somewhat, it probably only calibrated out the dust squiggles and donuts by 50%.   Also, it turns out that my exposures for the flat were so noisy that the applied flat actually added more noise to the images.

Anyways, for the past two days, the neighbors have been out late with their floodlights and deck party lights.

 

 

While you can see stars, it's just blinding to look in this direction at night.  It's like living next to a car dealership.

 

 

On the other side of the yard, there's this lovely image every night now.  The trees create a large diffuse fan of light that makes it easy to read by.   Two nights ago, these assholes left this floodlight on all night. 

So just to be clear, you reneged on a promise to pay half for the fence and now you fucking keep your lights on all night. 

Thanks neighbors.  Glad that you live in a place where you can see the Milky Way on most nights... wait, Milky Way?   What's that?

Oh and then this happened the same night...

Bad Logic on CN -- again

----------snip------------------

Posted Today, 07:01 AM

lainev, on 21 Oct 2020 - 04:09 AM, said:

Not to hijack the thread but Topaz DeNoise AI can bring a little more sharpness. I applied TDN to your image with this result.

Sheet_001.png

Dont use topaz noise AI for planetary imaging under any circumstances. Yes, it brings sharpness, but it does it by guessing and inventing the original content based on its experience of similar looking images. Its fakery.....its art - the clue is the 'AI'. It is very intelligent, but it isnt quantitative or scientific.

----------snip------------------

 

More idiots on CN think they are somehow doing scientific work when they are making their little planetary images.  And moreover, if you aren't doing it their way, then you are somehow engaging in an errant or wrong-headed activity.   These idiots think that because NASA publishes a Hubble photo that it's the most authentic thing possible and that there was no manipulation of the data at all.  

The implication is that art is just fakery and probably a delusion.  "Real" images don't engage in fakery and delusion -- vis a vis manipulation.

When the image hits the eye and a person experiences something, it's all been a manipulation of 0's and 1's.  The pure data is just numbers, there is no natural image.   Even if you were "there", there's no way we can verify that one person is experiencing exactly the same thing as someone else.   The nature of experience is personal and subjective -- partly because our experiences are black boxes of sorts that can't be scientifically proven to be identical to anyone else's.   Even if you tried to pin an experience down to electrical and chemical signals in the brain, there's no way that one's electrical and chemical signals are identical to someone else's.   

Of course, we have language and references that can correspond to others'.  But there's a difference between correspondence and being identical.  There are differences between the vagaries of using functional language to communicate and the idea of exact experiences.   Mathematics can be an exact activity but it falls short when dealing with questions of meaning and significance.

Observing Note from 9/27 regarding the 8 inch f/6 newt

I forgot to jot down my thoughts on observing briefly back on 9/27/20 with my 8 inch f/6 newt.  I started my evening by setting up the 8 inch f/6 newt, collimating carefully, and letting things cool down for 2 hours.  I decided to throw a hail mary and use the 3mm Delite eyepiece resulting in a 400x view of Mars.  For maybe 5-10 minutes, the view was contrasty and well-defined as the seeing seemed to be above average. From what I remember, Mars was still in the east and I was very surprised at the wealth of surface detail.   (Usually the seeing to the east is below average to awful.)

I also scanned the moon and I was able to see the kind of detail that I usually see from the C11 through the barlow and QHY290m.  

But after awhile, the image started shimmering and shaking and the magnification was clearly too much for the seeing conditions.  

Part of the reason for setting up the 8" newt was Venus.  My excitement was based on a theoretical notion that since the 8" f/6 was a two mirror system, there would be much greater UV throughput.  The C11 has two mirrors plus a corrector plate that obviously has anti-reflective coatings on it.   Also, the corrector plate itself could be a bad transmitter of UV light.   

I collected some RGB on Mars and it was pretty disappointing.   The seeing was below average and surface detail was not well defined at all.  Usually with the C11, I can see a few scant moments of decent detail in below average conditions.  But not with the 8 inch.   This runs sorta counter to a lot of received wisdom about aperture, seeing and the size of your scope.

This is a screen shot of the best moments of a single video from the C11 on 9/30/20 on the left and 8 inch f/6 newt 9/27/20 on the right.  In fact, I'm even cheating a bit on the right by shooting through the Baader 685nm IR passthrough filter.  The right image should be a lot more contrasty.  It's also worth mentioning that I had to lower the FPS to deal with the loss of brightness through the smaller instrument.  So my chances of getting a few "lucky" frames were much lower in the 8 inch.   Much less barlow power would have been useful to keep the FPS high, but that would have meant something like a specialty 1.3x barlow.

Perhaps no fair conclusions can be drawn from the image above and the evening in general.  It is quite possible that the C11 would have just produced a larger version of the poorly detailed image on the right.    But what is certain is that the theoretical maximum amount of detail will always come from the larger scope so there's not very many good reasons to use the 8" over the C11.

Later, I was able to test my theory about UV transmittance.  The seeing continued to be poor into the early morning hours.   The video through the Baader UV filter, QHY290m, and the Siebert barlow was also poor.   Not a definitive test by any means, but it didn't look like I was getting much UV at all through the 8" f/6.   To be fair when seeing is below average, it's hard to see any UV details on Venus with the UV filter.  I was expecting some obvious difference but none appeared.  It's quite possible that the coatings on the 8" mirror don't transmit UV signal well; or that there is enough deterioration of the coatings that the UV transmittance has been compromised.

 

This is one of the better frames of early morning Venus on 9/28/20.  There is some north and south brightness and hints of larger, darker structure of the equatorial areas.   But most frames were just misshapen blobs of uniform brightness.

(Later:  I was looking at more video from the 8 inch and there is a consistent "fuzziness" (or scatter) in the images which make me wonder if there is an optical defect like a turned edge.   It doesn't jive with the 400x views I had early in the evening, but sometimes very good seeing fixes a lot of problems.   Hm...)

(Later, later:  I think there's a good chance I FORGOT to place the UV/IR filter in the camera for the color data.)  👾🔥😓

Methane Notes on Saturn and Jupiter

 Just wanted to write the settings and config down for future reference.

With the C11, 2x barlow, the QHY 462C, SATURN capture settings in FireCapture are USB traffic = 3, Gain = 417, Exposure = 248.535067566729.

(Looking at the Saturn video (2020-09-24-0516_1.avi), it's possible I did not have the barlow in place.)

On JUPITER with same gear as above, I had one short video with the same exact exposure and gain settings.   Then I also had a run with Gain = 546 and Exposure = 315.876081949843.  Oddly, this second capture (which was the first one where I tried Methane - 2020-09-24-0628_9.avi) is dimmer than the first video mentioned (2020-09-24-0501_1.avi).  

Hm...  it's possible I tried using the Siebert UV barlow with the 2020-09-24-0630_4.avi file. 

The cleanest Jupiter video is the 2020-09-24-0501_1.avi which was the last methane video I shot that evening. 

It looks like I'm going to have to try just doing this all over and take careful notes on which barlow I'm using on which camera.

My guess is that the best combo is with the TV 2x barlow since the cleanest video show Jupiter as 20-30% smaller than others.  (The Seibert barlow is 2.5x).

I do remember that the QHY290m camera was really bad at methane as I had to push the exposure to 500+ ms with really high gain settings.   Based on QE graphs, it looks like the 290m only picks up about 40% of relative response at 900nm vs 80% from the 462C.

Seeing just went to the crapper

After showing H a rather average Mars opposition view through the C11, I setup the scope and gear to resume my imaging campaign.  This time, I'm doing the full meal deal with the QHY290m, filterwheel, 2x barlow (working closer to 3x), and the ZWO ADC.  As I start focusing, I notice that Mars is moving around a lot -- both the wavy-gravy and the fast shimmering are abundant.  There are even moments of complete smear out.   We went from average shimmering to smear out in the course of 10 minutes.   I thought there must be something pushing heat around the scope or something...

Then I look up and notice M45, Capella, and even all of Cassiopeia are flickering and shimmering above.   

The air seems suddenly a few degrees colder and I can feel my lips drying up.  Barring the arrival of a vampire in the vicinity, I think we just got a sustained flow of air coming over the peaks and straight into Doney Park.  

As I write this, it's about 10:30 and both CSC and Astrospheric forecast improvement around 11 pm.   If this shimmering ceases, then yeah, we got some imaging to do.   If it doesn't, I'll be collecting more "bad data" for no apparent reason.  :/

Later:  Seeing was okay to above average from 11:15 to 12:45-ish.   Got a set of data.  Then took a break, tried to resume at 2 am.  At around 2:30, it crapped out again and stayed pretty awful until I gave up at 3-ish.  The sky didn't look particularly bad.   But I noticed around 2:30 am a cold breeze from the NW started up about the same time the seeing went to the crapper... again.

The "full meal deal".

Some more comet shots from the past

I thought I posted these images when I started this blog...

 

This is an annotated and slightly cropped shot of Comet Lemmon (C/2012 F6 Lemmon) from 4/27/2013.  Looks like I shot it with at 100mm f/4 with a long gone Canon 5D mk II. 4 seconds at ISO 1600.  Approx. 4:37 am.

 

 

Tighter cropped area.

 

 

 

Based on the metadata, this was taken on 5/8/2013 at 4:03 am.  Shot with the Canon 5D mk II, 200mm F/2.8 for 10 seconds at ISO 6400.  Looking at the two focal lengths of the above shots, I believe this was the Canon 70-200mm F/2.8 lens that I owned for a few years.  It's unfortunate that I didn't attempt to take these shots with an equatorial mount and small telescope.

Apparently, this parasite-infested image shows that I did attempt a shot with a mount.  The metadata lists this as 303 second shot with a 140mm lens (again I think this is the 70-200mm f/2.8) at F/3.5.  ISO 1600.   And shot with the Canon XT (350D).   5/10/13 at 6:10 am thus the gradient from sunrise.  And of course, I'm assuming this is C2/2012 F6 Lemmon.  (Later:  I'm looking at this in Stellarium and the time must be closer to 4:10 am as the sky would be washed out in a 5 min exposure at 5 am and later.)

This is obviously not C2/2012 F6 Lemmon.  This is a common shot of Panstarrs (C/2011 L4).  Taken at the parking lot of Snowbowl on 3/12/2013.  There were easily about a dozen photographers shooting this at the same time.  Metadata says it was taken with a Canon 5D mk II, ISO 800, 2 second exposure.  The listed lens is 50mm, but I shot it through the long-gone Sky-Watcher 66mm F/6 with the .8 focal reducer.  The listed time is 7:32 pm.

Not my usual post

Okay, so I'm looking for Star Trek clips on Youtube because I was considering shooting the Lobster Claw Nebula which resembles the Romulan ship in the first installment of the recent reboot.  I'm trying to avoid political ads since they are all just toxic on a popsicle stick.  So I just clicked though the ad that appeared briefly before the Star Trek video.

Then this political ad appeared in the upper right corner:

When you have a picture, then text next to the picture, one usually assumes the text applies to the image.   It's really basic to layout design, so basic that I don't think you need to even explain it.   For example (I know, I know I'm being Mr. Obvious), if I posted my picture and I wrote, "dummy" next to it, you would completely understand the message.   Well, this appears to be from the Biden campaign.  But I think it's actually a pro-Trump ad attacking Biden. 

>sigh<  

Now where's that damn clip I'm looking for?

Excellent Seeing ???

I wasn't planning on going out last night, but when I glanced at the seeing forecasts, Clear Sky Chart (I keep saying Clear Sky Clock), predicted excellent seeing from 1-5 am.  Astrospheric also predicted excellent seeing from 2 am onward.  I was doubtful because I've went out under these supposed "excellent" conditions only to discover average seeing with shorter bouts (10 sec to 2 min) of decent to above average seeing.   I set up and took a little Saturn footage relatively early, then waited for Mars and the moon to get to a decent height.

When I checked again around 10 pm, the "excellent" seeing was pushed back to 4 am on CSC but Astrospheric remained the same.  I've also seen this scenario where the excellent seeing gets pushed back constantly until it doesn't start until 7 am (or later).   But having been up once during these delayed excellent forecasts, I've discovered that any excellent seeing that happens after sunrise gets destroyed by the sun which creates all kinds of turbulence for at least an hour.

I decided to set up the QHY462C camera and I tried my two different barlows and I wish I had taken better notes on which barlow I was using at what times.  I tried some A/B comparisons and I think for Mars, the Televue had the sharper view.  

I did some 11 x 2 min runs on Mars between 11 and 4:30-ish.  Prior to 4 am, it was okay but nothing special.  In fact, I was in that situation where I'd have moments of relative stillness in the image, but there wasn't much detail on the surface.  I also began to worry that the 462C was just inferior compared with the 290m with filters.  It just seemed like I was seeing finer detail with the 290m.

I finished a run around 3:30 am and I began to think about wrapping up since I wasn't seeing anything better than the usual okay footage.  But I took a short break, then came out to very still conditions...

(Try "full screen" after starting the video.)

I took this footage a little after 4 am.  I had to stand back to avoid weird lines I sometimes get from taking video so close to the laptop screen.  The footage isn't completely still, there is some mild high-frequency shaking and a little bit of "wavy gravy" but overall, this is MUCH better than what I experience under typical "excellent" conditions.   

So, this is it.  The best sustained seeing conditions I've experienced in maybe 300 nights.  I wish I had had the big dob setup.   It would have been phenomenal.

These conditions are pretty much what you get about 50% of the time in Florida.  In Florida, this would be called "good" to "very good".   Excellent seeing in Florida goes up a notch and that image would be dead still for 5-30 seconds if all your equipment is thermally stabilized.

After doing an 11 x 2 min run.  I took some footage of Uranus and it seemed like conditions worsened a bit.  Then I swung over to Venus and tried using the 462C with the Baader U-Venus filter.   It was pretty awful as the 462 is not very sensitive in ultraviolet.   Switched to the 290m (should have done this sooner) and got some okay Venus footage.   Earlier I collected at least some lunar footage but I don't remember when.  :/

I feel like I need a good old spiral notebook when I'm out shooting.

[Later:  I think I figured out how to properly read the seeing forecasts: 1) First, they are not going to be accurate 3 days out.  Too many variables around a mountain.  2) If Clear Sky Chart says excellent 12 hours before AND Astrospheric predicts excellent skies for a LARGE swath of land (including all of San Francisco Peaks), then it will probably be at least very good.  The dark blue area of excellence needs to extend for at least 30 miles in all directions.  Just as a point of reference, both Meteoblue and GoodtoStargaze completely dropped the ball on the 4 am excellent seeing. ]

So the results of the seeing forecasts are...

 Here we are at 11:35 pm on Oct 1 (Thursday night):

Clear Sky Clock seems to say that between 1 and 3, then 7 am onward it's going to be excellent.

Astrospheric predicts above average from now to sunrise.

 

 

Someone at Meteoblue finally updated their seeing numbers.  Which seem to suggest average seeing.

And the Goodtostargaze folks seem to generally corroborate Meteoblue.

I just spent about 45 minutes outside examining Mars and it's definitely mediocre to average.  So at least right now, Clear Sky Clock and Astrospheric are just plain wrong.   I think the winner here is Goodtostargaze.

I'll update things again around 2 am, but from what I saw a little while ago, it's not looking great.

(Update:  So, I was out until 3:30 am and I saw some moments of improvement but generally, it was average.   From 2:00 to 3:00 am, I had brief moments of (10 seconds to 2 minutes?) of excellent seeing interspersed with average seeing, but I had a hard time tracking focus.   My red focus would sometimes "wander" far away from what it should be and I thought my focus was slipping, but then 5 minutes later, it would be exactly where it should be.  Focus shift has been a problem - primarily because the Zhumell focuser (probably made by GSO) does slip when pointing near vertical.  I've tightened allen bolts but sometimes, it just slips (meaning it won't move "up" though I'm turning the focus knobs).  A 3 inch FT would not have this problem -- especially with the puny 3 lb load I have on it.  I keep thinking an electric focus would help (it would), but I worry about creating a "chain of cheapness" which will equal more disappointment.)