FLO

The ClearOutside weather forecast website for astronomers has now made over half-million forecasts for over 10,000 locations Most pleasing though is 86% of people who try ClearOutside continue to use it on a regular basis. Thank-you for making it a success

The Clear Outside website and IOS App was down for approx 15 mins about half-hour ago. Sorry The site and app are okay, no faults, but the server ran out of space after an unusually busy period. We should have received an alert early enough for us to respond but that didn't happen. Both the website and App are up again and the server will be upgraded in the morning. Clear Outside has now generated 484,587 forecasts over 9362 locations! Yes, we personally guarantee it Steve

We have never blacklisted someone for writing a negative review. That would be ridiculous. It would also be counter-productive because negative reviews keep us on our toes and help us to improve. It is true we asked bmc to shop elsewhere but not because he posted a negative review (his review and our response is here in this thread dated 27th Jan 2014). We did consider bmc's review unreasonable (he didn't mention we had already dispatched a replacement - twice - and had refunded his payment in full as our apology for the inconvenience caused) but that isn’t why we no longer accept orders from him. That decision was made when he accused me of lying. No retailer wants to lose a customer but we are not confident we can please bmc so have respectfully asked him to place his orders with our competitors. HTH, Steve

No, that's more Grant's forte. He brews his own beer For me coffee is king Steve

Oh yes, much more

After nearly six months Clear Outside has generated 300,741 forecasts for 6,785 locations. Thank-you

We are now a team of eight Natasha recently joined us and is working full-time with Annette and Lisa in order processing and dispatch. She is also a fully trained barista! Steve

We have begun work on a Clear Outside app for Android

Are you using the app or the website?

We have begun work on the Android app but we are almost entirely Apple here at FLO so it'll be a steep learning curve. Grant did say he likes a challenge... Steve

Apple have approve the Clear Outside cloud forecast app Hope you like it.

We submitted it to Apple last Wednesday. Apple don't say how long they take to approve an app but it appears eight days is average so it might be available at the app store later this week We are assuming it passes first time...

If the IOS app proves popular we will develop one for Android - promise Steve

It won't cost you anything. Clear Outside is our free gift to the astronomy community because, without you, we wouldn't be here Steve

The Clear Outside app is built and ready for launch Grant has finished the clever techie stuff and I need only to write a description for the app store's 'Details' page, then we'll submit it to Apple for approval. We aren't sure how long they will need (this is our first app) but we are guessing 1-3 weeks. HTH, Steve

We have received some really nice feedback from Clear Outside users but this email received last night is one of the nicest "Just wanted to say thank-you for providing such a great website. Tonight I was able to observe the International Space Station with my 7yr old daughter as it passed overhead.We were both amazed by the sight.It's simple things like this that have sparked her interest in astronomy."

With the telescope, camera and binocular lists growing we have added search-as-you-type ability to the drop-down lists It is certainly a lot quicker than multiple menus or scrolling through a long list. As always, if you can see a way Astronomy Tools can be improved or would like a new calculator added please let us know. HTH, Steve

Thank-you to everyone who has added telescopes, cameras and eyepieces to the Astronomy Tools website Also, we would like the site to be as useful as possible so we really won't mind if you enter equipment sold by our competitors Steve

Slightly less than perfect would be a dream come true

Clear Outside was launched only three months ago but has already generated 149,932 forecasts for 3,828 locations and feedback from users is remarkably positive, considering it is a weather forecast website. We are currently putting the finishing touches to a Clear Outside App for IOS that will be released around the end of October. If it is well received we'll begin work on another for Android. Thank-you to all those using Clear Outside Steve

I had forgotten about this thread until yesterday when someone told me off for not posting more about my choice To be fair, I don't normally discuss my choice of kit because I feel forums work best when members share firsthand experience, not retailers, and retailer opinions are rarely objective so should be taken with a pinch of salt! But here goes: Having spent nearly my entire working life selling optics I believe the Opticron Imagic TGA WP series are the BEST binoculars at their price. There are other models that are more compact and more robust but all things considered, especially optical quality, I haven't found anything better. Mine are always with me at star parties so if you have found something better for the price let's meet and do a comparison. How's that for coming off the fence Steve

Celestron are answering questions like these before the telescopes have even been launched The long life lithium iron phosphate batteries used in the Celestron Evolution series are rated to sustain two thousand charge cycles and have a life expectancy of 10 years. So a few minutes spent changing it, if necessary, is not a hardship HTH, Steve

We have added two more embeddable forecasts so you can now choose small, medium or large options To embed a Clear Outside cloud forecast in your forum signature, website or blog please go to your local forecast then click on the 'Embed forecast' button (top-left). The 'small' option is shown below in my signature but here are the 'medium' and 'large' for comparison:

Thank-you for the kind comments We have another update for the astronomy tools binocular calculator section. Manufacturers tend to specify a binocular's FOV either as metres @1000 metres or angular FOV in degrees, but rarely both. This can make comparing binoculars difficult so we have created calculators to convert one format to another. Hope you find them useful. Steve

The exit-pupli is currently available above and to the right of the image (see attached crop) but I guess if someone saves the image for later it would be useful if it were there too. Thank-you Rik