Clear Outside Weather Forecasts for Astronomers

[alexbb]

Are you sure about the forecast source?

[Charic]

1 hour ago, Grant said:

It’s not static - the image updates hourly - just make sure you’ve linked to it correctly and your browser isn’t caching it.

If you downloaded the image then yes it will be static.

Correct me if I'm wrong?
If I click on my clearoutside image in my signature, it defaults to the clearoutside.com  web page and  sure enough the data is updated. My reference earlier was to the image within my signature block. It's over an hour since I last embedded that image yet the image still remains the same, no update. If the clearoutside.com page is able to update my signature image, then I'm still setup wrong. It was my impression that just looking at the signature  alone would give me the information required. 

[Grant]

17 minutes ago, Charic said:

Correct me if I'm wrong?
If I click on my clearoutside image in my signature, it defaults to the clearoutside.com  web page and  sure enough the data is updated. My reference earlier was to the image within my signature block. It's over an hour since I last embedded that image yet the image still remains the same, no update. If the clearoutside.com page is able to update my signature image, then I'm still setup wrong. It was my impression that just looking at the signature  alone would give me the information required. 

There’s two different things going on here - the image itself refreshes once an hour but, the forum caches ALL external non SSL images for one day so even though the image gets updated hourly SGL only refreshes signatures daily.

I think there is now a solution to this - in the image url that Clear Outside provides, change the http:// bit at the beginning to https:// and then the forum software won’t try and cache it so it will update in your signature once an hour.

 

[Charic]

Copied the whole link including brackets?..added the 's' to make 'https:'

[Grant]

You need to add the https to the bit after [ img ].

Only on phone so will post the full thing tomorrow if you’re still having trouble.

[Charic]

Corrected.

Thanks for your patience.

Edited October 8, 2018 by Charic

[Grant]

9 hours ago, Charic said:

Corrected.

Thanks for your patience.

Hmmm it looks like the forum is still caching it - I will need to look into this, it might be a forum bug.

[Charic]

Thankyou .
Nothing changed here since my last text, but I've noted already that the embedded link has been updated with both http text's now showing https.
I copy pasted the whole link again, but still its showing my original 00Hrs image rather than that of 1400 Hrs today!
You're probably aware of this already!

Grant, Unless I'm wrong, I'm expecting to see the current conditions just by looking at the  avatar in my signature, without actually clicking on the avatar itself. 

 

Edited October 9, 2018 by Charic

[Charic]

17 hours ago, Charic said:

I'm expecting to see the current conditions just by looking at the  avatar in my signature

Looking different today! Thank you Grant.

[Spondonste70]

I do Landscape Astrophotography and clear outside is one of my go to sites to understand if it's even worth venturing to a location for a night shoot. The other highly useful web pages I use are Dark Skies finder and Photpills app. Due to living in the East Midlands (UK) light pollution is problematic and so typically it's a few hours drive  to real dark skies locations. Consequently Clear Outside is one of the first web pages I go to to check how likely to decent photo shoot is likely to be. I've seen no information previously as to how accurate the data is and am aware that the predictions can changes multiple times through the day. Consequently I try to ensure that night shoots are at locations where I can do things other than just a night shoot in case the prediction isn't accurate.

[Stub Mandrel]

Minor bug... centred on Midnight Saturday it's highlighting 11:00 am on Sunday as the current time, but it's 11:37 am SATURDAY.  I normally use centre on Midday so I haven't noticed this before, but it appears it gets confused when the current time is before when the display starts.

Edited June 29, 2019 by Stub Mandrel

[Grant]

On 29/06/2019 at 11:43, Stub Mandrel said:

Minor bug... centred on Midnight Saturday it's highlighting 11:00 am on Sunday as the current time, but it's 11:37 am SATURDAY.  I normally use centre on Midday so I haven't noticed this before, but it appears it gets confused when the current time is before when the display starts.

If you check the forecast in the AM and you have it set to centred on Midnight, it has to show part of yesterday in order to be able to show the forecast for the current AM.

We are working on some changes to Clear Outside this year and the 'views' is one thing I want to tidy up and have a more intelligent view which shows you the full days hours centred on Midday if you check in the morning and then the over night Center on Midnight view if you check in the afternoon - I think that would be more logical.

[Stub Mandrel]

9 hours ago, Grant said:

If you check the forecast in the AM and you have it set to centred on Midnight, it has to show part of yesterday in order to be able to show the forecast for the current AM.

We are working on some changes to Clear Outside this year and the 'views' is one thing I want to tidy up and have a more intelligent view which shows you the full days hours centred on Midday if you check in the morning and then the over night Center on Midnight view if you check in the afternoon - I think that would be more logical.

Hi Grant, that's even weirder behviour!

Up until  the actual time of 11:59 the top line displays the hours either side of midnight yesterday/today.

At the stroke of noon, it changes to displaying the hours either side of midnight today/tomorrow.

But the labelling on the left does not change.

This is confusing as in 'centre on midnight' mode the midnight displayed can be either the one before or after the day indicated.

For consistency it should be displaying the day name for YESTERDAY against the top line up until the change at noon to make it clear the weather on the top line starts on the day that has passed. Also all the days below need to be moved back one when in this mode (and the time is before noon).

[discardedastro]

Might be worth flagging up that Dark Sky, the data source for forecasting for Clear Outside, has just been purchased by Apple. They appear to be aiming to gradually shut down the API.

https://blog.darksky.net/dark-sky-has-a-new-home/

 

[FLO]

Thanks for the heads-up 🙂

It will be available until end of 2021 so we will have plenty of time to consider alternatives. 

[JamesF]

This from the BBC News website:

Apple has purchased the weather predicting app Dark Sky and plans to shut down the Android and Wear OS versions.
...
The app's creator Adam Grossman said the partnership would allow Dark Sky to reach "far more people".

James

[Stub Mandrel]

20 hours ago, JamesF said:

This from the BBC News website:

Apple has purchased the weather predicting app Dark Sky and plans to shut down the Android and Wear OS versions.
...
The app's creator Adam Grossman said the partnership would allow Dark Sky to reach "far more people".

James

Ah, but iAstronomers are a better class of astronomer so they count twice.

[AnakChan]

Has anyone noticed that “Clear Outside” no longer shows Day 5 to Day 10 (at least on iOS, don’t have Android)?

[AstroMuni]

I use this app quite a lot on Android and love it. Thanks FLO.

I have a feature request - that when the cloud coverage is below (say 5%), the colour is shown a deeper blue and black when its 0. Would make it more user friendly 👍

[StuartT]

On 21/07/2014 at 11:29, FLO said:

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). 

 

Hi

Can't get that to embed in my signature. I tried both the HTML and BBcode versions. What am I doing wrong?

Edited March 7, 2021 by StuartT

[Grant]

22 hours ago, StuartT said:

Hi

Can't get that to embed in my signature. I tried both the HTML and BBcode versions. What am I doing wrong?

Looks like you sorted it? SGL no longer supports BBCode, most forum software is moving away from BBcode as with the WYSIWYG editors these days, there is no need for it.

[StuartT]

5 hours ago, Grant said:

Looks like you sorted it? SGL no longer supports BBCode, most forum software is moving away from BBcode as with the WYSIWYG editors these days, there is no need for it.

I did. Thank you.

But I am struggling with this moon phase widget. Do you think there is a way to also have this one in my sig somehow?

https://moonphases.co.uk/tools

[Grant]

1 minute ago, StuartT said:

I did. Thank you.

But I am struggling with this moon phase widget. Do you think there is a way to also have this one in my sig somehow?

https://moonphases.co.uk/tools

That uses script tags so cannot be embedded on SGL, it would be a security risk.

[StuartT]

46 minutes ago, Grant said:

That uses script tags so cannot be embedded on SGL, it would be a security risk.

ok. no worries. Thanks

[Pixies]

Just noticed that the DarkSky API support is now ending 31 March 2023. Does @FLO have any plans for alternative forecast data?