Category Archives: Weather

Forecasters’ idea of a ‘clear sky’ vs my idea of a clear sky!

Just recently, I have got more than a little annoyed and frustrated with the weather forecasters’ less-than-accurate definition of “clear skies”. To me, as to any other amateur astronomer, a clear sky DOES NOT mean murk, high cloud and other general crap obscuring the view of all but the brightest stars and planets. I am so fed up with reading on the forecasters’ web sites (including the BBC) and hearing and seeing the weather bulletins on TV and radio promising “clear skies” only for it to be haze and murk with only a few bloated, bright stars and planets visible and all but the very brightest star clusters wiped out.
Okay, I understand that Joe and Jane Public don’t give a toss about astronomy and that, as long as shadows are cast during the day and they see the odd star or two or the Moon (when around) at night then, to them, that constitutes “clear” but, can we have a bit more accuracy in the forecasting please? If it’s going to be hazy, tell us. Don’t fib and say it’s going to be clear when there’s actually going to be a load of high thin cloud around.
Yes, we do get contrails from jets passing overhead, but these dissapate quite quickly and the high thin rubbish is not all contrails in any case.
To this end, I have emailed the Mess Met Office. It most likely won’t change anything but it’s always good to let these sort of organisations know that people are taking notice of what they do and say and, if it’s inaccurate, then they should know.
“I am an amateur astronomer and I am increasingly annoyed and frustrated, as are other amateurs, by the forecasters’ definition of “clear skies”. To us “clear skies” do not mean high haze and murk with only a few bright stars visible as this is NOT clear and is totally useless for doing any astronomy.  Can we please have forecasts which more accurately reflect this and not misleading (from an astronomical point of view) ones that do not take into account high thin clouds? Several times recently clear skies have been forecast, only for those so-called “clear skies” to turn out to be murk and high cloud – and on checking the on-line forecast it still says “clear skies” when it obviously isn’t!

I understand that the forecasts are aimed at the general public, a lot of whom consider a bit of hazy sunshine or a few bright, bloated stars and a murky Moon to be “clear” and who have no interest in, or understanding of, astronomy, but amateur astronomers are also members of the public and we’d like more accurate forecasts, please, taking into account haze and high thin clouds. “

It’ll be interesting to see what sort of a reply I get – if, indeed, I get one.

Frustrating!

All this afternoon it has been looking good for a clear evening. Until just now when it clouded over – the satellite pic does not look good either, with the system out to the west turning round and dragging crap up from France. How annoying.
Above: Satellite image, from Sat24.com, showing the crud moving up from the south/south-west. There’s a clear spot to the south west, but that, unfortunately, will miss us. The latest view shows it filling in, in any case.

Below: The view from the garden, looking south west, and an upstairs window, also looking south west, aren’t any better.
It might clear off in the early hours but as I have to be at work tomorrow morning, that’s not a lot of good. Hopefully, it’ll be better later in the week. I have only managed five observing sessions since January, so this is all a bit depressing, especially as I want to get among the spring galaxies before the days lengthen so much that observing will become awkward. I think I’d like to emigrate to a clearer climate at a lower latitude. I’m glad winter’s over but I hate the light nights.

Texas, here I come!

I booked my flight to Texas this morning. I could have booked online or phoned an airline but, wanting a change of scene, I headed to town and went to a travel agents. My flight is with United Airlines and I fly to San Antonio via Houston (and return the same way) on 7th May. It wasn’t as expensive as I thought, only costing £457; last time I paid nearly £600 but that was because I’d left it very late to get a ticket.
Less than three months to go; I am looking forward to seeing everyone again!
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Through a link on Cloudy Nights I found this lot. Cloud Appreciation? I take it none of them – or not many – are astronomers. Mind you, having said that, I suppose there’s a slight crossover when you think of noctilucent clouds, which astronomers love. Noctilucent clouds notwithstanding (and they dissiapate after nightfall), I hate clouds – at night – and I don’t think I’ll be joining any love-in over them. However…maybe the CAS can have their clouds in daytime and we astronomers can have clear starry nights? That way we’d all be happy as the cloud-people won’t moan about astronomers complaining about the clouds.
Mind you having just said all that…I am not above saying ‘Hey that cloud looks like the starship Enterprise, or an elephant, or a bird, or the starship from Alien…’ and so on. I may not like ’em much but clouds can be entertaining, for a few minutes, anyway.

Stuff…

I haven’t gone away, I am still here. However, since getting off to a flying start 2010’s observing has taken a nosedive, with endless crap weather and almost constant cloud cover. We did have three clear(ish) nights at the end of January, but these were – typically – around a Full Moon, so I didn’t bother. I haven’t even seen Mars this opposition.
Like other amateurs, I am hoping that the coming spring will bring clear skies and galaxies.
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I got my registration confirmation for TSP a couple of weeks ago. It’s looking likely that I’ll be there but that’s subject to an upcoming temporary work contract which begins on 15th February. If that falls through and I can’t get anything else, I’ll have to give TSP a miss. My fingers are crossed that all will be well, though
In the meantime, we have the now annual Isle of Wight Star Party to look forward to in March, from Thursday 11th to Monday 15th March. I am a volunteer for this event, so I’ll be there from the Friday night until the Sunday evening. Obviously, I hope we have good weather for this, not only for the – hopefully lengthy – observing sessions, but because I am camping and don’t fancy it if the weather’s unpleasant.

No observing last night!

Because of a hefty amount of some unfamiliar white stuff landing on the UK. Usually the Isle of Wight escapes and we get murk and rain. Not this time. We got some unforecast (as far as the island was concerned) snow. It is 5 inches deep this evening and it looks like tomorrow will be another unscheduled day off work as it is due to freeze, making driving even more treacherous than just the snow by itself.

Geminids

Just because I am into deep sky observing doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate a good bit of shallow sky action when it’s happening and 13th, 14th and 15th December happen to be when you can see the annual Geminid meteor shower in 2009. It promised to be a good one, with predicted rates of 100-120 meteors an hour. The shower was due to start around 2130 UT although the best time would be after midnight UT when the radiant had risen high enough.
Still having the effects of the bad cold I had caught the previous week I went to bed early and got up at 2330 UT, dressed and carried my folding chair (a useful souvenir of the IW Festival a couple of years ago – a relative of one of my aunt’s work colleagues was one of the clean up crew and there were a lot of discarded items, as-new-only-used-once items at that, afterwards, all free to a good home) outside.
In the course of half an hour I saw many meteors, at least three or four a minute, maybe more. Most of them were quite small ones, but there were also large, spectacular ones too. Something I noticed was that you’d get a short lull of a couple of minutes, then a flurry of several meteors before another short lull of a couple of minutes. It was quite a show and, with the Moon out of the way (waning crescent which rose just before 0700 UT), a big improvement over the much more famous Perseids in August which were washed out by a quarter Moon this year.

After half an hour I was getting cold and having to get up at 0600 meant that I couldn’t stay outside much longer. A pity as it was shaping up to be a nice night, after cloud earlier in the evening, and I would have loved to have brought the 12 inch out for its first proper winter observing run. I got out of the chair – and my knees were so cold I thought they’d snap! – and headed in after a pleasant half an hour gazing at the sky with nothing but my unaided eyes.
Unfortunately, with a grim forecast and a cloudy sky, tonight does not look as if it will follow suit.

Binocular observing session 11-12 December 2009

Sod’s Law was in action last night as I had a severe cold which prevented a proper observing session with the 12 inch, and it was the clearest and most transparent sky we have had in ages. I had spent most of the day in bed with coughs, sneezes and fever, having been sent home from work at lunchtime, but something compelled me to look out of the window at 2330, I am not sure why I expected it to be clear as most of the day had been cloudy and a bit foggy. I felt a bit better and I hate wasting clear skies so decided on a short session; besides it would have been a bit foolish to have stayed out for any real length of time and get cold.
Obviously I didn’t feel like lugging the big scope out, or even one of its smaller friends, but I put on jeans, jumper and shoes and went out with the 8×42 binoculars instead. I also pulled out my UHC and OIII filters out to see what winter nebulae I could see with the binoculars.

11-12 December 2009; 2330 – 0005 GMT/UT
0.5

° above freezing
No wind
Excellent transparency apart from the odd bit of clouds on the horizon; out of 5, where 1 is bad and 5 excellent, it was 5. The seeing was reasonably steady too, Antoniadi II.
Naked eye limiting visual magnitude was 6.5

Of course, I just had to go for M42, the Orion Nebula. It is an irresistible object in any instrument, including binoculars, and is worth looking for even if it is the most observed deep sky object in the sky. I make a point of saying hello to it every year, as I do all my favourites, and I can’t wait to see it in the 12 inch. Huge, very bright, fan shaped, with four stars visible in the Trapezium. Needs no filtration, although UHC brings it out slightly better (OIII not as effective). M43 also visible as a little round patch.
Also looked at NGC 1981 and NGC 1980.

I also had a (over optimistic it has to be said) look for NGC 2024, the Flame Nebula, but I did not see it. I didn’t think I would in binoculars but, as they say, nothing ventured, nothing gained.

NGC 2237-8/NGC 2246; the Rosette Nebula in Monoceros.
Large, round and bright with the star cluster NGC 2244 at the centre. The nebula is only just visible without a filter, but the UHC makes it very easy to see. The OIII is also effective but it’s best with the UHC.

Ursa Major was low behind the trees but M81 and M82 were above the trees and easily seen with the 8x42s.

M31 was bright and huge through the binoculars, spanning the entire field of view. The core was bright and the spiral arms extensive. Good view of the dust lanes.

NGC 869 and NGC 884; the Double Cluster
Gorgeous through the binoculars. Very rich and large with the stars easily resolved.

Trumpler 2
Small fuzzy patch just SE of DC. Also NGC 957, another hazy patch.

NGC 1499; the California Nebula. This isn’t quite as easy to see as the Rosette, especially without a filter, but the UHC filter brings it out and you can see a hazy brightening of faint nebulosity extending east-west, immediately north of Menkib.

By then it was 0035 (GMT/UT) and I was getting cold and coughing a lot so I had to reluctantly drag myself away from the sky and head indoors and back to bed.

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The odds on me attending the 2010 Texas Star Party have slightly improved. I have got a temporary job until Christmas and have so far, managed to save nearly half the air fare. Hopefully, a run of employment between now and April will enable me to get there. The air fare’s most of the battle, with prices ranging between £350 and £550 (of course I can’t leave it too late before getting the plane ticket, must get that in January or February or it’ll become more expensive), while the TSP, including accommodation, is fairly cheap and doesn’t require a lot of saving for. The other big ‘expense’ is the cash for any goodies that might catch my eye when I am there such as a 2-inch UHC filter that I want for viewing large nebulae with my 35mm Televue Panoptic.

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I have retrieved my clear sky spreadsheet from the wreckage, scanned it twice with Norton, and loaded it onto the new computer. I had been keeping a note of the weather in the intervening period – not exactly hard when it’s mostly been cloudy! – and have been able to pick up where I left off. November makes dismal viewing with two clear nights and one partially clear night in the whole month, but I wasn’t able to take advantage of those clear nights unfortunately. As noted in a previous entry, it has been two months of nearly continuous wind and rain, with a large part of the UK affected by flooding.

Observing by 97% moonlight

After what has seemed like an absolute eternity (in reality it was around two months – but that’s plenty long enough), I finally managed an observing session. Sure it was a very short observing session of one hour, but it was an observing session nonetheless.
The reason for this was that not only has the UK been battered by a succession of Atlantic storms leaving half the country under water, work and illnesses (a succession of nasty abcsesses) have also interfered with any hope of getting outside on the rare clear occasions.

It was clear this evening, so I set up my 12 inch Dob, despite the rising Moon which was one day past full so, as you’d expect, it was washing out the sky quite badly, an effect exacerbated by mist and high thin cloud. Despite this I decided to try an experiment. I wanted to see if NGC 404 was visible. This is a galaxy in Andromeda, adjacent to Mirach (it has the nickname The Ghost of Mirach) and it was visible. It’s not that faint anyway, but it’s the sort of thing you’d expect the Moon to kill stone dead. It was, as you’d expect, fainter and harder to see than usual, but otherwise visible.

Cygnus was getting low in the west but I decided to poke round there for a bit partly because it will soon be gone until next summer but also it was in the part of the sky opposite the Moon. Obviously I wasn’t going to be silly and hunt for nebulae that I had no chance of seeing in those conditions but I did seek out some clusters instead, open clusters are pretty immune to light pollution. One of the clusters observed was Collinder 419. To say that this was unspectacular is an understatement. ‘Boring’ is probably a more accurate description. It’s composed of three or four brightish stars and a few more nondescript fainter ones.

The session was short, due to the conditions, only an hour but after two months without, even an hour in crap conditions is better than nothing! Roll on the next clear night that has no Moon in the way!

It was also my scope’s first outing since I made the modifications to the mirror cell, with the new collimation springs from Bob’s Knobs. When I took it outside and set it up the collimation was only slightly out and it took hardly any time at all to get it spot on, a major improvement on before. My new laser collimator also works nicely.

Clear nights spreadsheet, so far.

A few posts ago, I mentioned that I was doing a spreadsheet showing the number of clear nights vs cloudy ones over a given period of time. Now August is over, and we are into September, I can look at the first full month and see that, actually it was not bad at all. I only recorded eight nights in July, and of these three were clear – out of eight nights three clear ones in what had been an exceptionally wet and wild month were actually quite good. August, the first full month of this had sixteen – yes sixteen! – clear nights, or partially clear nights, that were observationally usable (partially clear nights are only on the spreadsheet if it was clear for an hour or more with 70% or more of the sky cloud free, that allows you to do at least some observing). That’s over half the month, and for a change these clear nights were NOT around the Full Moon! Of course, due to work, etc, it’s not possible to make use of all clear nights but it’s nice to see we’ve done well so far.
Here’s hoping this pattern carries on into September and beyond…

Scopes and stuff

Hopefully, in a few weeks’ time I’ll have a new 12 inch scope. My current temporary work contract, due to finish on Friday 7th August, has been extended until September 7th, so I hope it won’t be more than four weeks before I can afford to spend £500+.

I have narrowed the choice down to 12″ Skywatcher Flex Tube, 12″ Meade Lightbridge and 12″ Revelation (GSO, same as the Lightbridge). Ideally I would have gone for something like the Orion Optics UK 12 inch but at just under £900 this is out of my price range and, anyway, one of the cheaper ones will do nicely until such time as I can afford a bigger-aperture scope. These days, though, even the cheap scopes are good and I wish they’d been around when I wanted a larger scope ten years ago, then I wouldn’t have messed around buying mirrors and then waiting (interminably it seemed!) for the damned scope to get built and then getting problems with the f**king thing! I also considered an Orion (USA) Intelliscope 12″ but they are a hideous price, over £1000.

The Island Planetarium at Fort Victoria sells scopes (Meade, Orion USA, et al) so I have gone there in my search. They deal with B, C & F so that narrows the field down but there are still some good choices on offer. Getting it from the Planetarium resolves the issue of someone having to be at home to accept delivery of the thing or the even worse hassle of a visit to the mainland to collect it.

I have considered the Revelation 12 inch Dob, if they still do them (Telescope House do, via the net but whether the wholesalers BC&F do, I don’t know), as it’s a positively bargainous £550 – and a decent scope too, from the reports I have read – although I have heard that the tube is a bit of a big bugger, weighing in at around 23 kilos, but as the rucksack I lugged round Australia and SE Asia a few months ago was around the same weight, I do not foresee a problem. If I do my back in again, though, there might be an issue but until then…

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I am curious as to exactly how many clear nights we really do get here in the climatically-challenged, sea-bound British Isles. Opinion varies slightly on the quantity of clear nights (depending on your geographical location as there’s a lot of variety even in this tiny country) although we all agree on one thing – there’s NOT NEARLY ENOUGH of them! So I am doing a spreadsheet over the next few years that should give me a clearer (pun not intended!) picture of our local sky conditions here on the Isle of Wight. It’s not scientific but should be interesting.