New astro-weather log

[Jonk]

Lots of people are having the same issue, days, weeks, maybe longer without seeing stars or even a glimpse.

I'm certainly no exception, so I tried last year to keep a spreadsheet of the weather directly locally to me, not based on forecasts but on real information.

I could only do this visually before bed, then again in the morning. The problem was, I missed maybe 1 in 5 days for various reasons.

This year, I have a new tool - an Allsky camera that's currently poking out of a window. Eventually, it'll be installed on the roof or something, hopefully running 24/7 without any issues.

The software is running on a Raspberry PI 4 and every morning it spits out a timelapse, keogram and startrails image should it be clear.

Here's a keogram example from nightfall to about 1am where I took the camera indoors due to incoming rain threat:

This is a great way to keep a record, and an accurate one, and so far I have managed to accurately record how it has been since January the 1st.

Here's a screenshot of my astro weather so far.

I base it on (any time from sunset to sunrise):

green=clear for most if not all night

orange=patchy cloud, limited chances of maybe lunar or planetary imaging possible, or visual

red=no chance.

I wonder if anyone has had it worse so far?!

Edited February 2, 2021 by Jonk

[banjaxed]

Looks very familiar 🙁

[SteveNickolls]

Great stuff, keep recording. I've been keeping a manual record of nights allowing me to get outside and either observe or image for a number of years which I posted in anothanother SGL thread (copy below).

The problem is one man's observing session can be different to the next and imaging planetary taking less time than for DSO work. So far January was rubbish, clear nights with the waxing Moon up. Also location will affect records. Recently I've been keeping an eye on a Weather and Radar App on my tablet which so far has been very precise in allowing self forecasting for cloud, far superior to Cloudy Nights which sometimes says 100% cloud when there's not a cloud in the sky.

Good luck with your endeavour and great to compare data.

Cheers,

Steve

 

Month	2012-2013	2013-2014	2014-2015	2015-2016	2016-2017	2017-2018	2018-2019	2019-2020	2020-2021
June	1	3	0	5	2	3	10	0	4
July	3	4	2	2	2	1	7	5	8
August	4	9	9	7	6	13	11	13	5
Sept	5	8	9	11	6	8	12	13	11
Oct	7	8	6	10	4	7	7	8	7
Nov	4	7	8	10	3	10	9	9	9
Dec	6	6	10	8	3	6	14	4	10
Jan	6	4	9	5	4	11	15	6	6
Feb	4	4	5	6	4	5	15	7
Mar	2	2	5	5	4	3	5	8
April	0	2	7	4	5	6	5	8
May	0	3	3	3	3	9	4	7
Totals	42	60	73	76	46	82	114	88
Sessions/month	3.5	5	6.1	6.3	3.8	6.8	9.5	7.3

 

And imaging evenings-

Month	Number of Telescope/DSLR and Lens/DSLR Imaging                       Sessions
	2015-16	2016-17	2017-18	2018-19	2019-20	2020-21
June	-	2	1	1	0	0
July	-	1	1	3	0	1
August	-	6	7	8	5	2
Sept	-	3	6	4	8	9
Oct	-	2	2	5	2	2
Nov	-	1	2	4	0	3
Dec	4	3	4	5	1	5
Jan	3	1	4	6	4	3
Feb	3	0	1	3	4
Mar	4	4	1	1	3
April	4	5	2	1	4
May	5	2	3	3	1
Total	23	30	34	44	32	25
Sessions In Month	23/5=4.6pm	30/12=2.5 pm	34/12=2.83 pm	44/12=3.7 pm	32/12=2.7 pm

 

This all relates to Nottingham of course and living elsewhere may involve 

[Jonk]

It looks bleak and doubtful it’ll change for the good any time soon.

I can remember even 20 years ago the winters were mostly drier and clearer than now.

[PXR-5]

5 hours ago, Jonk said:

It looks bleak and doubtful it’ll change for the good any time soon.

I can remember even 20 years ago the winters were mostly drier and clearer than now.

I remember that being the case also.

 

I don't get it, since Dec 27, the day I received my PST scope, it has been cloudy/rainey for all but 2 days.

Sadly I was unable to get out those days due to family commitments.

[Jonk]

Last year, based on say 80% true records, I had an average of around 1 night per week across the year where conditions allowed long exposure work.

It isn’t as bad as it feels but sometimes it can drag on! Like at the moment.

Last night for example, lots of cloud and 25% chance of rain predicted most if not all night, what actually happened was stars were visible, no real clouds for a time and patches of very clear but rain was in the air, you could feel it and see it with a laser pointer.

Horrible transparency.

So, although “not cloudy”, it wasn’t “clear”. So it gets an orange on the chart.

[Jonk]

After yet another awful month weather wise, well most of it - we've had 4, nearly 5 days on the bounce where good imaging conditions were possible!

[Chefgage]

13 hours ago, Jonk said:

After yet another awful month weather wise, well most of it - we've had 4, nearly 5 days on the bounce where good imaging conditions were possible!

Interesting. Might have to have a look at installing this at my house.  If you can get it to tell you when the 'green' nights will be in advance then you have cracked it!  

[Jonk]

8 hours ago, Chefgage said:

If you can get it to tell you when the 'green' nights will be in advance then you have cracked it!

....big cash to whoever can do that and patent it!

[Jonk]

Well, March has been a pretty poor month for long exposure imaging. So poor, I've dismantled most of the kit now ready to tinker with it some more.

[Jonk]

So, April has been better, even though the nights are a lot shorter. I have noticed although clear, the skies have been milky at times so it will be interesting to see if this repeats year on year.

[SteveNickolls]

Thanks again Jonk for the updates you have recorded for 2021 so far. My own records show some similarity to your own-

Month	Nights for Observing Under	Nights for Imaging
January	6	3
February	8	5
March	6	0
April	10	3

 

Cheers,
Steve

[jjohnson3803]

Keeping a weather log would probably just depress me.  😏  However, I have been considering getting some kind of wireless cam to monitor cloud cover. 

Normally I'd have to stumble over to a window or out onto my back deck in the middle of the night to check conditions, but it always took a few minutes to wake up.  I've switched to a very near real time weather phone app so now I check conditions without getting up, but it really doesn't replace eyes on the skies.  A sky cam display on my phone might be the best of all worlds.

[Jonk]

It is very useful, I’ve been playing with allsky cameras for a while and wouldn’t like to be without one now.

[Jonk]

Another month, another update. Bit of a 50/50 month but it ended on a high.

[Jonk]

June is over, another mixed bag of 'astro-possible' nights.

[Jonk]

July has been and gone, and the middle 3rd of the month would have been great had the nights been longer and darker!

[Jonk]

Here's August - a couple of decent nights and the return of astro darkness. I actually managed 6 hours of astro dark imaging on the 24th, so that's good!

Edited September 3, 2021 by Jonk

[Jonk]

September....the return of astro darkness early enough to mess about with before bed. Mostly it's been a very patchy month, with plenty of 'short' imaging opportunities between batches of clouds, meaning a couple of hours here and there.

[Jonk]

October - oh dear. Very mixed with some frustrating weather conditions, however plenty of opportunities to get some hours in.

[Jonk]

So, November - some surprising very clear nights early on, then a lot of partially clear nights. Good for getting a couple of hours in here and there. End of the month has been very poor with few opportunities.

[Jonk]

December. Oh dear December! I heard it was officially the cloudiest month in the UK for a very long time. There were usuable patches, but in the main it was not good at all.

In conclusion, the reason I wanted to do this was to total up the green, oranges and reds and convince myself and hopefully others that astronomy in the UK isn't all bad really!

So, totals:

Green - Clear (good astro most or all night): 45 nights

Orange - Partly cloudy (some astro possible during the night): 157 nights

Red - Cloudy (no astro possible at all: 163 nights

Although on the face of it things look bad, the way I see it is there's a clear night (all or most) at least once per week on average across the year and 1 in every 3 nights you could get out and do something during the night.

Any other thoughts? Shall I do the same again for the next 12 months?

Edited January 1, 2022 by Jonk

[ONIKKINEN]

As someone living at 60 degrees north, i have 4 months offseason every year at 2 months either side of midsummer. Looks like the summer months were not that bad, is there any astronomical darkness at that time of year for you?

As a bad joke, we too have most of our clear nights during summer in which astronomical darkness is physically impossible...

[Jonk]

I thought exactly the same, a good run of clear nights at the worst time of the year for astro-darkness.

But, there's plenty to observe / image in the summer, even with the very short nights, it's not all about long exposure DSOs.

[ONIKKINEN]

9 minutes ago, Jonk said:

I thought exactly the same, a good run of clear nights at the worst time of the year for astro-darkness.

But, there's plenty to observe / image in the summer, even with the very short nights, it's not all about long exposure DSOs.

True, Planets and the Moon i did manage to see/image during summer. Jupiter was surprisingly good on one night (just that night) during summer so not entirely wasted.