Is this normal

[mcut]

having only been doing this for about a year and therefore never really paying attention to "night time weather" i just wondered whether the number of clear nights we seem to have had in the last year is normal or whether the more experienced among you think it has been cloudier than previous years

[James]

The last year has been about the same for me in Somerset as the previous year. Back in the mid 80's when I started out even up in central Scotland we had a lot more clear nights. Then again, I had no kids to worry about so could take advantage of every opportunity so its possible there hasn't been any real change...

Its a little depressing though... :?

James

[steppenwolf]

I have pondered this too but I feel that the sky conditions, especially moisture content, have deteriorated over the three years I have been involved in astronomy but I do not have empirical data to back this up!

[CELESCOPE]

It is i believe getting worse every year , when i started out maybe 10 years ago . it seemed i was always out imaging, this carried on for some years ,up until about 3 years ago ,since then things have got worse, i do hope this is not the trend.

Rog

[MrEd]

Down here on the south coast the weather was

last like this in 2004 with constant cloud and bad seeing.

It cleared up by August and the 2005 season was great.

However last autumn and winter were some of the worse

cloud cover i have seen in a long time.

:crybaby:

Ed

[Trevor]

Sunny here don’t know what you lot are on about cloud what cloud?

[Ant]

I agree with Roger.

For me it was great the year before I met Russ, which I guess would be around 2004.

So if my math is right. The winter had the classic, cold black skies up to the winter of 2004. From the winter of 2005 and ever since we do not seem to get the cold winter nights, with jet black skies...

It is possible I could be a year out with my memory.

Ant

[FLO]

I am not convinced. As our hobby progresses we become more fussy about the skies we choose to observe under, so see more, less often ... kinda. Then, we remember the number of clear nights spent observing, not the number of available clear nights. Thats my theory anyway

[CELESCOPE]

lol well thats agood one Steve , but really not true in my case, it is a real fact that things have got worse, , i used to do 4 or 5 images per night back before 2005 , and that was DSO ones , it really has beome worse , at least here in Essex, where once we used to be the dryest part of the country lol ,does,nt ring true now though

Rog

[SteelRat]

It's like this cos people keep buying stuff all the time. As long as everyone can get their spending done while it's like this now so the weather's ok when the skies get dark again...

Hope you don't mind a lean Autumn Steve

[Vega]

The only way we can really know is with some proper recorded data over the past few years. I'm sure there's plenty of bias in our own personal views, (I myself tend to conveniently forget the clear nights when I had other things on and couldn't take advantage of the good skies ). The met office might have done this kind of survey aready somewhere as a Countrywide average?

For me in Somerset, I found this winter was much better than the dreadful 2007.

Matt

[cygnusx1]

It's like this cos people keep buying stuff all the time. As long as everyone can get their spending done while it's like this now so the weather's ok when the skies get dark again...

Well I heard this morning on the radio we're entering a recession, my personal experience the past 9 months seems to back this up too!

So with nobody spending on new kit, we should soon be back to normal

[dave1978]

The weather recently has almost killed my enthusiasm for the hobby! i started in summer last year and got hooked, i had plenty of great summer nights viewing allsorts. Then along came winter and things carried on so i upgraded hoping for a lifelong hobby. Then came 2008 and i have hardly been out! im not die hard and know i have missed some clear nights but its just been terrible!

Its got that bad i have had to start a new hobby! electric RC copters, very hard already crashed, waiting for spares to start training again.

[geoff_k]

Plenty of clear skies, although not I think as many as in days of yore. The problem is more to do with the seeing which is definitely getting worse and worse.

I agree with Steve. You get more fussy and demanding as you get more and more sophisticated toys.

I can recall going out with my first cheapo refractor under any clear sky I could get and possibly getting as much buzz out of it in some ways as I do now with a much bigger scope.

As for imaging, you have to kiss an awful lot of frogs before you get a prince if you know what I mean. I can't or don't want to remember how much raw data I have binned and been very disappointed with my night's work. No amount of jiggery-pokery in Registax and/or Photoshop has been able to rescue some of it.

As the RAF motto has it "Per Ardua Ad Astra" or in the words of Winston Churchill "Keep buggering on"

[Talitha]

:sunny: It's possible that we're merely experiencing the effects of the solar cycles.

I read somewhere (maybe in "The Sun Kings") that Herschel documented the solar cycle by referring to archived wheat prices. Iirc the cloudier the sky, the higher the price.

So it seems that clear/cloudy cycles correspond with solar cycles.. make sense?

[algol]

i know i am still a noob to this stuff but the weather considering that it is "summer" is quite depressing. i got out nearly every night in jan and feb when i started out. now i know what i'm looking for though i can't get out.

last time i was out was the 7 may i think

[Vega]

:sunny: It's possible that we're merely experiencing the effects of the solar cycles.

I read somewhere (maybe in "The Sun Kings") that Herschel documented the solar cycle by referring to archived wheat prices. Iirc the cloudier the sky, the higher the price.

So it seems that clear/cloudy cycles correspond with solar cycles.. make sense?

Yeah that kinda ties in with the suns effect on cosmic rays that allegedly stimulates cloud formation. Highly active sun reduces cosmic rays thereby reducing cloud. When the sun is at low activity it allows more cosmic rays to reach the atmosphere therefore more cloud. (I believe a certain channel 4 programme rather foolishly attempted to make out that this was the main cause of climate change. Shell/BP/The middle East and friends thought they had nothing to worry about :roll: )

Matt

[Stephen Green]

Some 10 years ago I spent a lot of time out side in the Autumn and the Winter and spring looking back at my records I seem to have had up to 10 clear nights in row for weeks

Stephen

[Sam]

Last year had heaps more clear nights than this year - but then I was in NZ.

[scotastro]

Here in SW Scotland for me the weather is very important so I record every clear night of the year. Since we opened in 2004 there have been typically 135 to 140 nights per year. That is a completely cloud free sky. A further 20 or so have patchy cloud but observing still possible.

There is only a rough correlation year on year as to which nights are clear and which are cloudy. Interesting I have a neighbour who records daytime weather - over 2000 hrs sunshine per year - no wonder gardens have palm trees - really.

So I would say that while the clear periods may move around a bit each year there has been overall no change.

Scotastro

GAC

Galloway Astronomy Centre

www.gallowyastro.com

[lunator]

There is a guy at Ewell AS who has been checking this data since 1965.

He has 3 categories - Clear sky all night , Clear/Cloudy night ,Cloudy night.

His data shows that the number of cloudy nights has remained fairly consistent but the number of Clear nights have declined and the clear/cloudy nights have increased.

My guess is that as most of us observe in the evening then the increase in the clear/cloudy nights will mean that some of those nights will be cloudy when we want to observe but will clear up later.