In, Out, Shake it all about

[JamesF]

They're doing that thing where they change the forecast when they find out what the weather turns out to be again!  Mere hours ago there was a forecast of clear sky from 8pm, then 9pm, then 10, now 11.   I've been out and opened up the observatory, but I'm really not convinced.  Despite the cloudy forecast we have clear sky for the moment, but I can see some very dark looking stuff heading our way from the west and I'm not sure that sat24 looks too clever at all for later tonight.  There appears to be quite a big lump of cloud heading our way from the Atlantic.  Hopefully it's just got a party to go to in Ireland or something.

James

[johninderby]

View out of window at the moment vs BBC local weather. 🤔

Edited May 31, 2019 by johninderby

[david_taurus83]

17 minutes ago, JamesF said:

  There appears to be quite a big lump of cloud heading our way from the Atlantic.  Hopefully it's just got a party to go to in Ireland or something.

James

Yep, heading our way. Kinda annoying as were having nice mild weather but endless cloud. Even my last 2 sessions were marred with high cloud.

[JamesF]

Well, I did at least just watch the ISS pass a couple of minutes ago.  But another check of the weather forecast shows that they've changed the start of the clear period from 11pm to midnight in the last five minutes or so!

James

[geordie85]

I'm sorry. That'll be me with and the new kit paradox. 

New qhy183m on my flt98 and old qhy183c on my star 71. 

[JamesF]

Well, like a single track railway, this evening has turned out to be completely pointless...

Certainly I have been working more slowly than might be desirable thanks to being somewhat out of practice.  It's a whole lot easier to get going when all you're doing is pushing a dob about   But not only have I failed to get any drift alignment done, I also had multiple failed attempts at doing a three star alignment, which is to be fair a little tricky when the clouds keep obscuring your alignment stars.  The forecast has sneaked along for at least the last eight hours, switching from "clear" to "cloudy" about half an hour ahead.  That's really not forecasting.  That's little better than looking out of the window

Anyhow, it does at least appear that my initial polar alignment isn't too bad on the one mount I worked on in that pretty much all of the time the target stars for the three star alignment were in the field of view of a 12.5mm eyepiece after slewing, even if the handset then decided that it couldn't make enough sense of the results to actually know where it was.  I might see if I can tighten up the "home" position tomorrow though I think that is pretty close already too.

James

[6footgeek]

It was the same situation in Birmingham! Managed to get set up by 11:30 and got alignment nailed for the first time with sharp cap. Also got my guiding working once the clouds had truly cleared and managed a small run of 300 second exposures on the whirlpool galaxy. Yes I’ve been up since 7am but this is the first time everything on my new setup has worked. Everything went so well that I started hitting issues I’ve never had before like trailing cables throwing guiding off. I’m one happy chappy!

[Demonperformer]

There have been a lot of nights like this lately. Trouble is, with so much "high" cloud about in the evenings, I have not been bothered to go out and set up. And in the mornings an hour before sunrise (when it is too late to start setting up) it has been crystal.