Was the seeing particularly good last night?

[RayD]

I was having a little fiddle with cleaning and spacing last night, and noticed it was pretty clear, so opened the roof and got a few HA subs of the Pelican nebula.  What I noticed was my PHD graph, which is typically pretty good and around 0.50 RMS or a bit under, was absolutely fantastic (in my view), and maintained a very flat graph and around 0.29 - 0.31 RMS.  It was going for ages with no pulses to the mount at all, although this seemed to change later as we neared the Zenith, and the number of pulses increased.

Would this be due to very good seeing conditions do you think?  The images were 20min using a Baader 3.5nm HA filter, and they also were very good indeed, with no trailing etc. I assume indicating the guiding was as good as the graph suggested.

[wxsatuser]

It did seem very good last night.
Clear,  MW showing well but stars were dancing a bit on my Lacerta display.

I don't bother checking the onboard graph, if the guiding lights are not on much , it's a good indication that guiding is really good.

Had nice stars across the frame and easily got FWHM of 1.8 on focusing.

All in all a good night but wish it was a bit longer.

[RayD]

16 minutes ago, wxsatuser said:

It did seem very good last night.
Clear,  MW showing well but stars were dancing a bit on my Lacerta display.

I don't bother checking the onboard graph, if the guiding lights are not on much , it's a good indication that guiding is really good.

Had nice stars across the frame and easily got FWHM of 1.8 on focusing.

All in all a good night but wish it was a bit longer.

Great stuff, thanks.  That pretty much reflects what I had then.

I hadn't realised seeing plays such a significant part with guiding.  I knew there would be an effect obviously, but just not quite as much as I saw.  It was also very still from a wind perspective, so I suppose that helps also.

As you rightly say, all too short, particularly on a work night!

[wxsatuser]

I did about 4 hours, just under 2 hours on Sadr area and 2hours on Heart and Soul.
Breeze died down as it got dark, cloud came through around 10.30 and then clear till 3am when I went in.
At 5am it was cloudy again.

[DirkSteele]

I was too busy to take advantage unfortunately but I have heard reports of others in London that the seeing was "rock-solid" last night.