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".
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