Clear sky forecast again

[JamesF]

Having had a spectacular failure last night, I returned home this evening from a family "do" to find that the Met Office are forecasting clear sky overnight tonight, so I rushed out to open up the observatory whilst dinner was being prepared.  A quick check a short while later showed a sudden change to 80% chance of rain almost immediately and then clear sky, so I rushed out again to close the observatory up!

Looking clear now though, so I'm just waiting for the sky to darken again and we'll see what actually happens.

James

[Ronclarke]

Good luck, clouding over here in Newark on Trent, an early night methinks!!

[JamesF]

Out in the observatory now.  Still have the occasional cloud passing over, but it's not looking too bad at the moment.

James

[Star101]

Cloudy here too. Worse that last night so I wont be bothering sliding the roof back. I will wait another half hour, just in case  

[John]

Very mixed here. Heavy clouds one minute, some quite big clear gaps the next. I'm just messing around with my 70mm travel scope and picking off what is showing in the gaps. I'm glad I have this very portable scope otherwise I don't think I'd get any observing in tonight.

 

[Alan White]

Had a quick look from the new screened observing area with the binoculars, report that the pad screening blocks all the stay lights from houses each side.

Sadly does not clear the cloud and as it’s back to work in the morning after 2 weeks off just a quick test between cloud.

Short session bringing big smiles all the same. 

[Swoop1]

Got out tonight and tried a bit of single frame imaging with the new C6 and Sony a6300. A couple of poor shots of Jupiter then a couple of M92 followed by M13 which looked a bit hazy despite my best efforts. I then realised dew had misted the objective on the C6 so packed it all away.

I will be importing the product tomorrow so will get a better lok at the outcome then.

[djpaul]

Just set up my small scope

 Looking clear here but not amazing.  

Maybe a little lunar observing in an hour or so. 

[JamesF]

Now the Moon has gained a bit of altitude it seems that it's much the same here as for John.  Probably about 25% cloud cover overall, with big lumps here and there.  My main aim for the evening was to get my HEQ5 polar aligned though, and I think I'm doing ok with that, so I shan't go away unhappy if that's all I achieve.

James

[DaveS]

Looked like it might clear earlier but there was sufficient wind to make imaging iffy, plus the moon coming up. Clouded out now so a moot point. Off to bed.

[JamesF]

Well, I stuck with it despite the forecast changing for the worse and predicting rain after midnight.  Managed to get the HEQ5 aligned satisfactorily, though it look somewhat longer than expected because cloud kept messing up the sky to the west and I couldn't use the east because I'd have been so close to the Moon.  (I have to drift align this mount because I can't see Polaris over the observatory roof from the pier it's on.)

Then just before 1am I got a nice clear spell just as the Moon was clearing the trees to the south east.  I took that as an omen, switched to the 127 Mak and grabbed a couple of full disc sequences on the Moon.  By 1:40 it was clouding over heavily though, so I decided to call it a night.  There was a pretty heavy dew by the looks of it so I'm not sure how good the data will be.  That's a job for tomorrow.  For now I'm warming up a bit before going to bed.

At the moment there's a clear forecast for tomorrow night, too.  I'll have to come up with a plan just in case it turns out to be correct.

James