[Poll] Localized observation-statistics

[AstroNerdy]

Hey guys,

are there any kind of observation-statistics (regarding the location) online? Like historical weather records, but for astronomy.

I'm primarily interested in the number of clear (observable) nights per year, or hours per night. And as I said, a rough statement of place would be nice.

If there is nothing like that, then it would be even nicer to start a little collection here. Do you have any statistics to share for our place? Even estimations are interesting for me.

The more detailed - the better.

Primary

- number of clear nights per year:

- number of nights used to observe:

- average hours:

- rough location:

Secondary:

- number of full-moon nights:

- average seeing:

- ...

I am delighted with every response. The best location wins . . . a new neighbor, maybe.

Best regards,

AstroNerd

[ronin]

Not aware of any that are astronomy specific, would suggest that you could contact universities that have an established astronomy degree or Phd component. They are the places that are most likely to maintain records of such things. Or established observatories.

Thinking that individual people may start but could easily miss making recordings.

One thing to be aware of is that records that are historical will be on paper and in record books.

[AstroNerdy]

Hey,

thanks for your answer. I hope my school english is understandable.

To be more precised. I'm not looking for weather data, but I was hoping there is some database that contains information like 'average number of observable night' for various places.

So I don't need a complete list to start my own database, but I was looking for some rough samples for a small subset of places. It don't matters for which location the stats belong to. So they don't need to be germany-related. Would be nice to get some information from very widespread locations around the world.

So, keep guessing. Need just a hand full of places.

Best regards,

AstroNerd

[AstroNerdy]

http://www.riverdingo.net.au/data.htm

Found this Observatory in Australia, which publish their 'clear nights' stats since 2007. This is exactly what i'm looking for. They defined 'clear night' as:

A Clear Night is defined by us as six hours of continuous clear dark skies at the minimum.

[...]

As of June 2011, we have also introduced an additional criteria "Mostly Clear" to show the nights where imaging is fine, but the sky has not stayed continuously clear for the strict six+ hours minimum.

So, do you know of any other observatory, which records such data and publish them?

[acey]

- number of full-moon nights:

That one's easy - it's once every 29.5 days, anywhere on earth.

Professional observatories routinely collect data on observing conditions and useable telescope time. Here for example is an analysis of data for La Palma and Mt Graham observatories:

http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.1190