Finally a Clear (mostly) Night ?

 

So, in REALITY, it's currently 60% clear at 8:47 pm.   Astrospheric coincides with the CSC.   They also both predict above average seeing from 1 am onward.

My completely non-scientific eyeball look at the stars seem to indicate better than average seeing currently.

Weather dot com wins for cloud cover.

I'm going to start imaging at 10 pm-ish.   We'll see if the seeing predictions are even close.

 

 Hm...

[Next day:  The seeing was best around 10:30 pm which (definitely above average) but I didn't do any serious imaging until 11:30 when things started to worsen.   Light clouds rolled in occasionally to obscure Saturn and Jupiter but overall, it was average+.  CSC and Astrospheric were plain wrong.   I noticed that Astrospheric did update its info a little bit, upgrading from below average to average.   But both CSC and Astrospheric kept indicating there were cloudy to mostly cloudy conditions when it was obviously mostly clear to clear conditions.]

 

 

 

More Complaints and Stuff

 So, I'm on my 3rd consecutive night of "okay" imaging of Jupiter.  About 5 days ago, both Clear Sky Chart and Astrospheric were predicting periods of excellent seeing.  

Then about 12 hours before (like mid to late afternoon on the same day), the seeing would be downgraded to "above average" with occasional "average" periods in the night..   "Above average" is a a pretty nebulous prediction or forecast because in my experience that translates into "below average" to "above average" conditions.   It's never consistent.  The reason this is a problem for me is that I have a monochrome setup and a color camera setup.   The monochrome setup uses a RGB filter wheel and I have to refocus on every filter.   My current method (which I admit is pretty lame) is to use color marked lines on my focus knob that correspond to red, green, and blue focus points.   The problem is there is always slippage in the focuser which means after 3-4 runs, I have to focus based on what I see on the screen.  

When the conditions are "average" or worse, it's very hard to determine best focus for any of the filters because the image is so mushy and wavy that out-of-focus and correct focus seem indistinguishable.  If I know for certain that conditions are going to be variable, then it's best to stay with the color camera.   I don't usually refocus for 5-6 runs with the color camera.  

Which brings us to tonight...   the forecast was average to above average and I'm typing this at approx. 946 pm.   Visually the sky is okay for transparency, but the the stars are INCREDIBLY STILL.   Usually this translates into actual above average to exellent seeing for imaging.   BUT I'm sitting here listening to the Lymax cooler because I only setup about 20 minutes ago and I usually like to let the cooler run for 60 minutes.   I'm going to let it cool for 45 minutes and see if I can take advantage of this seeing.   I hope it stay around for a couple hours....

Later:  I wanted to mention that I've seen about 5-6 meteors per night which is unusual because I'm not looking for them.  Some of the meteors are definitely Perseids, but I'm also seeing random ones coming from somewhere around Cygus or Pegasus.  In any event, if it's clear, the Perseids may be very good this year.