blinking clouds

[singlespeedman]

with the seeing forecast for my area being pretty good I headed out with a friend. Both armed with 127 maks, one celestron and my sjywatcher, we hit the intended spot in the new forest and the sky was wonderful. Fully set up my friend spent ages trying to work out how to calibrate his celestron. Having spent some more time with my scope I was calibrated and away with some visual viewing in minutes. Jupiter and four moon was spectacular and the level of detail I managed on the moon was amazing. After about 20 minutes my friend was trying to download the manual for his scope as he was going very wrong and the set up is different enough from my scope for my help to be a bit hit and miss.

Whilst he persevered I decided to bust out the laptop and webcam to have another crack at Jupiter. Stellarium all working fine for the targeting and the webcam set up just right I looked up to see a thick blanket of cloud.

All I can say is that the air was thick with a blue haze all stemming from my mouth in a tantrum any four year old would be proud of. I am now off to find a 5 meter cable to extend the range of my auto focuser and be fully set up to observe from the sofa with cables running to the back garden. It seems the only time the sly is clear these days is when I am headed out the door to work in the morning or when I am sat in watching telly with the wife.

[Catanonia]

Always the case and hence why I image from my backyard. I am just to busy to make a trip out for it to be wasted beyond my control.

I ended up putting some fence panels together and making a makeshift roll off observatory. Now I just pull the roof, align and control it from the warmth of my house for imaging.

[singlespeedman]

My garden gives great views from east to west with the moon and Jupiter running over the houses and very visible, poor views north though. I am thinking of taking the plunge and popping a pier in besides the house that will allow me track from a very stable source.