No chance of Solar observing today

[Pig]

It doesn't appear that I will get any chance to observe the sun today, the forecast shows cloud all day apart from a 1 hour break at midday, the question is do I wait to see if the forecast is correct or shall I pay a visit to the steam room !!!  problems problems  Mind you there are some blue patches peeping through the clouds so there are some promising signs.

Did anyone see the Moon last night ?

I got some fantastic observing time in as the clouds cleared up very nicely around 11 O'clock, I even had complete success with my new zoom and the 1.6 X barlow, all in all a very good night.

Does anyone know why zooms and Barlows work so well together ?  I am a bit lost as to why this is so.

[Luke]

I find the forecasts close to useless for solar, Shaun! They said cloudy this morning, just got in from a full h-alpha imaging session. I'd checked sat24 and thought there might be a gap.

Had a quick look too, the active regions were beautiful swirls of activity. One of them reminded me a bit of the Whirlpool galaxy!

Quite a bit of cloud here now.

[Pete Presland]

managed to get about an hour between 8-9   forecast looks poor though for the rest of the day.

a fair amount of cloud around last night, so i put the chiminea on, grabbed the bino's and recliner and layed under the stars/clouds till the early hours with my wife. very relaxing and peacefull.

moon looked very nice last night when it cleared.

[Steve Ward]

Forecast was for solid cloud here all day , not that I paid any attention to it ... 

[Pig]

Luke,

It does appear that solar forecasting is poor, this may be because gaps in the cloud allow for solar viewing and the forecast just says cloudy !!

Pete,

I enjoyed last night once it had cleared, I think the Moon always suits observing better when it isn't full, the termination makes it more appealing

Steve,

Same here but it is quite sunny now, not good enough to get the scope out yet but it may well be soon.

[Davey-T]

Forecast was for solid cloud here all day , not that I paid any attention to it ... 

Ours says "chance of showers" perhaps I'll ignore them     .

Dave

[Pete Presland]

Ours says "chance of showers" perhaps I'll ignore them     .

Dave

i normally have a brolly up anyway when solar imaging

[David Smith]

Sat24 is probably your best means of predicting a gap it seems.

[Steve Ward]

Or Black Magic ...  can't beat selling your soul for a bit of blue ...