Are June & July skies like this typical for UK?

[Pingster]

Hi,

I have had my first telescope for about 1 month and a half. This June i had about 3 good nights and July.... i don't think i have had one decent night yet. Don't get me wrong, ive had about 3 clear sky nights, but the visibility has been very bad... i can only describe it as bright stars having 'glows' around them. And when that happens i assume theres a lot of fog and mist in the air, giving bad seeing?

Since owning my telescope i have only just started to take note of the sky cloudiness and quality. So is June & July typically what we can expect for the rest of the year for UK? Or do other months have more consistent days of clear good viability skies? What months are the best for the UK?

Thanks

[brantuk]

The coldest months are usually the best I'm afraid - darker for longer but the lack of cloud means the earth gets cold. You'll know you're dedicated when you've been out till 3am and there's ice on the scope lol

[Nexus 6]

Hi Pingstar, its not a great time for observing/imaging but soon things will pick up, the skies will get darker bit by bit and that will give you the chance to take advantage of the relatively warm nights/mornings and the many great objects on show.

Your right about taking more notice of the British weather, had the same symptoms when I got my first scope a few years ago....now I am always checking how things are looking which for this weekend are terrible!.

Winter is better conditions wise as Brantuk has mentioned. Make sure you get yourself some WARM gear to wear.

Going by last winter you may need them, at least the views help to keep you warm

Hope you get out there in a few days

[Pingster]

Hi Brantuk,

As a new scope owner, im 'keen to use it'. I'm very dedicated. Becuase i start work at 12pm mid day everyday. I am able to nip out for a 1hr drive to get my dark sky fix if weather permitting. And yes my best night was on Bignor Hill from 12am to 4am in the morning. I had my best views of the milky way, M13, Dumbell Neb ever. The icing on the cake was watching Jupitor rising slowly over the horizon at 3.30am. It felt like it said to me, "well done".

I just cant wait for another night like that. And i want to experience it in my new ethos 17mm. Ive not had a chance to use it in a darkish sky yet, but whenever i get to use it in my back yard, with city LP, the FOV conbined with is slight sharpness improvment over my plossls, make for endless enjoyment of the skies even if all i can do is just star hop.

[ronin]

Really we should consider any observing in the summer months as an unexpected bonus.

We can get quite a bit of cloud, the air is warm, thermals from the land cause more disturbance, add in short hours of darkness and it makes the mid 4 months of the years pretty dubious.

The nights get longer in September and generally the days are cooler and so less air turbulance to peer through.

[brantuk]

Sounds like ideal working hours Pingster - very lucky. If you want to get a rolling review of "Insolation" download skyviewcafe. Lots of interesting info and tabs to explore including daylight times and rolling sun shadow over the earth. Bit basic compared to stellarium but very useful nonetheless:

Sky View Cafe - Astronomy - Star Charts and Ephemeris

Also - if you switch off tracking and click on the hours number - you can advance time to see whats coming up over the horizon and the wobble/opening of saturns rings by hitting the up/down keys.

[twotter]

It's been a disappointing summer so far, but now I'm back observing I'm just biding my time for the Summer Triangle to reach a good position.

Then it's showtime

[peteftm]

I've heard some people say "if it was clear every night you'd get bored of setting up" well i'm not too sure about that! But when we do have a clear night, you do get a tad excited

I like october nights as it's darker and not too cold

[pete_l]

So is June & July typically what we can expect for the rest of the year for UK? Or do other months have more consistent days of clear good viability skies? What months are the best for the UK?

Yes this year is pretty average so far as clear nights is concerned. I was exactly the same when I started, because I tend to remember clear/sunny days and forget about all the cloudy/rainy ones I thought there was much more clear weather than there actually is.

In practice, I get between 12 and 20 clear nights' observing in the UK per year. That's taking into account full moon (too bright), social engagements and having to curtail activities for an early start the next day.

While people here talk a lot about how dark their skies are (or how light polluted) nobody seems to have any quantitative view on how many clear nights they get. There's little point in having the country's darkest skies if they are continually clouded over. It's something I've started to investigate, but so far my conclusions about clear skies in the UK are not good.

Mainly for my own amusement, I've been collecting the data the Met Office publishes about cleasr/sunny/cloudy weather to get an idea where the best regions are. Here's the latest one from last Sunday

The long days and short nights mean it's much clearer during the day than at night (the yellow/black bars represent the number of hours of clear skies during the day/night for last week. You can't discren numbers from this, but you can compare different parts fo the country)

[RikM]

I will have to check my log book for last year but I reckon about 3 - 5 good clear observing nights per month. Quite a few more for a quick peep with Binos but still not a great total.

[Pingster]

Hi everyone, thank you so much for all your replies. Its great being on a forum that is actually very active

Brantuk, wow, the link to Sky View Cafe. Its amazing, a stats geeks dream. Looks like i will be using this a lot. I did not get what you meant by isolation until i ran Sky View. I can now clearly see that we are in the worst month for astronomy, the sky is not even properly dark. Looking at it by end of Aug... its up and up for us stargazers This explain why i got better views from my backyard on the first use of my new (first scope) in early august compared to what i am seeing now. I was wondering how come with all the diagonal and eye piece upgrades i have added, why my views have not improved. Now it all makes sense.

The calendar view is also great, and it will help me not make the mistake i made yesterday. Driving +hr to a darkish site under full moon . Thank you so much.

Pete and Rik, you both hit the nail on the head with regards to my thread question. OMG, so on average considering our daily lives we can only expect 3~4 good nights a month, With an average of maybe 20 to 30 trips/good nights a year. Gosh Astronomy sure will make the clock tick faster.... it makes weeks feel like days!

[brantuk]

Lol Pingster - glad you like it - it's so quick and simple to use I don't know why more folks don't have it.

(I take it you have Stellarium [or Cartes du Ciel] allready? If not - they're free as well and very impressive)

[Pingster]

Yup, i have Stellarium thanks to this forum. Makes life so much easier.