CLEAR SKIES ALL NIGHT IN MOST PLACES - WED 10TH TO THUR 11TH !!

[AMcD]

1 hour ago, Tiny Clanger said:

 

South side of Brum we said 'Bill's mother's' which adds a nice bit of alliteration ,  I vaguely wondered if it was that bloke from Stratford  U. A .

Do you 'go all around the Wrekin'' too ? I bemused a few folk with that one when I came to the East Mid.s ...

Heather

We do not - I am not sure what the equivalent is here...

[AMcD]

It did indeed clear after the snow clouds. Finally catching some light... 

[david_taurus83]

[DPF]

Two nights in a row out looking at a totally clear sky. Unbelievable Jeff 🥳🥳🥳

[Paul M]

Last night was excellent here. I was out from about 8 pm to 2 pm. 

Today has been a spectacular day hear, not a cloud in the sky all day. Got home from work at 7pm, got fed, looked at the rainfall radar and saw a wodge of precip just to the east and heading right over us. Not been out to confirm but I'm sure it's now cloudy.

Looks like quite a bit of cloud coming from the east now. Up for work again at 6am so could use a rest!

[Carbon Brush]

Just been for a short play with a new camera/lens pairing.
Put them on a small photo tripod so it was easy to swing around to the temporarily clear bits of sky.
Only light snow falling on the laptop. Not enough to hide the key markings or concern the electronics.
Got a pic of some slightly out of focus star trails on a 1 minute exposure.
Convinced myself that is what I had captured, rather than snowflakes.

[Marki]

Cloudy. Packed up. Frustrated :(.

Bet its properly clear next full moon.... . Again.

Those of you with clear skies, grab some photons for me would you?

[BaldyMan]

Had a good first proper session  last night. I've had the scope out other nights but cloud cover has made it difficult. Actually got Starsense to align and guide to a few objects but light pollution seems to affect it a lot and I needed to star hop to help it along.

Got a good look at Plaedies and the Orion Nebula, my little girl actually claimed she could see it in colour saying it was purple not grey.

Light pollution made anything dimmer just impossible but I was able to see the beehive cluster and split Castor. So all in all a good first proper night I'd say

Edited February 11, 2021 by BaldyMan

[happy-kat]

^ nice report

Patchy clouds but had a go, inside viewing only, trying camera with fuji lens focus just not nailed, had I got it reasonable I'd have left allskEye running. Got ideas to try for next time.

[Pixies]

Despite all the apps looking good, Edinburgh last night was cloudy until 1am. Even then, the transparency was so poor, I could see fewer stars than with a full moon.

I saved myself for tonight. Fingers crossed!

[AbsolutelyN]

Not a good night here again, constant cloud. Out of 500 frames only about 50 were usable - and that's with 30 second exposures. Clear blue now sun has come up though. 

[Mognet]

Wasn't as clear as I was hoping for. Went out to do the Orion star count and only managed eight with averted vision after adapting to the not very dark night here. Decided not to take the scope out after starting to feel the cold within ten minutes.

20 hours ago, AMcD said:

Suffolk.  My grandfather used to use the phrase regularly and my mother and uncles still do from time to time.

 

A

I was going to ask if you had a Suffolk connection when I read it. My parents, who were from Sudbury and Clare, used to say it

[wulfrun]

It was crystal clear here last night, virtually all the visible stars showed no twinkling. However, it was bitterly cold and I decided just to have a scan around with the binoculars and do the CPRE Orion star-count. I spent about an hour before my cold feet, hands and nose forced me back in. Probably just as well I decided not to put a 'scope out but I did spend half the time wishing I had and half the time glad I didn't.

The view to the north was washed out by the floodlights on the racecourse, very annoying on such a rare night. Without the moon though, the Orion nebula really seemed to pop, if that makes sense, despite the city-centre sky-glow - even in the binoculars it was a "wow" sight. Rigel and Sirius really seemed to be glaring down at me too.

[wulfrun]

21 hours ago, Tiny Clanger said:

South side of Brum we said 'Bill's mother's' which adds a nice bit of alliteration ,  I vaguely wondered if it was that bloke from Stratford  U. A .

North-west side here, my family always said "black over the back of Bill's mother's". Another variation I guess.

[Tiny Clanger]

Having been prepared to take as much advantage as possible of the promised 7pm to 7am clear sky I went out for a couple of hours of standing in the snow and looking through the little dob , nice, clear and steady skies , an a balmy -3 C .

Having seen what I had decided on as targets which would be in tree and streetlight free bits of my view I did the Orion count with very well dark adapted eyes and went indoors for an hour, with new targets in mind which would by then be in 'good' areas and high enough ... Went back out at 10pm and clouds were streaming in. The rest of the night I kept checking, but cloud and mist persisted, and the 'scope came in at 2am. Oh well, at least I got two hours.

Heather

[AMcD]

6 hours ago, Mognet said:

Wasn't as clear as I was hoping for. Went out to do the Orion star count and only managed eight with averted vision after adapting to the not very dark night here. Decided not to take the scope out after starting to feel the cold within ten minutes.

I was going to ask if you had a Suffolk connection when I read it. My parents, who were from Sudbury and Clare, used to say it

I was born in Sudbury and grew up in Suffolk.  My parents still live there.  Very dark skies.

[Mognet]

3 hours ago, AMcD said:

I was born in Sudbury and grew up in Suffolk.  My parents still live there.  Very dark skies.

A large part of my family are still living in Sudbury and surrounding villages. Definitely good skies round there with none of the continuous sky glow round here. They might even have some decent clear nights too!

[Les Ewan]

Wasn't out Wednesday/Thursday mainly due to my observatory roof being welded shut by ice. I suppose if I really tried I could of released it but what with the snow showers and a temperature of -11C I decided to give it a miss. I managed to brush the snow off the roof and release it in the afternoon while the sun was out.

Conditions this morning were a bit weird ,things were normal in the late evening but later most of the sky had a background milky glow which made the fainter DSO's difficult.Even my southern aspect which looked fairly dark there was no inkiness with the fainter galaxies invisible.

My theory for the reason is fronts in the west have extended a haze across the sky and it has been made more visible by the albedo of the snow cover.I also think the jet stream may have started to return as seeing for binaries has also deteriorated.

To make matters worse a breeze with gusts up to 18mph has sprung up which is unpleasant in itself also started blowing snow into the observatory.😡

[paulastro]

Well, I started this thread as it looked to be set fair for me on 10/11th.  As it turned out I had rotten skies and saw virtually no starlight.  Last night it was even worse.  I'll certainly not be posting any more weather forecasts, I should have known better!! 😁.

[Littleguy80]

I was happy to have a couple of hours of clear skies to try a new eyepiece. It was my first time observing in the snow too  

[Mognet]

1 hour ago, paulastro said:

Well, I started this thread as it looked to be set fair for me on 10/11th.  As it turned out I had rotten skies and saw virtually no starlight.  Last night it was even worse.  I'll certainly not be posting any more weather forecasts, I should have known better!! 😁.

Blame the weather people for wonky promises? 🤣

[theropod]

Over here in hillbilly land it’s been exceptionally cold and cloudy for the past two weeks. We got almost 13mm of sleet yesterday in the wee hours. It’s supposed to be near zero° at Daylight Monday. Later in the week a “significant” snowfall (>12”) is expected. I doubt the cloud cover will break before a week has past. Last winter it was very mild here, and up until a week ago it looked like a repeat was at hand. Buying a new mount, finishing a diy refractor and buying an eyepiece camera was the prefect storm of karma for inducing long term cloudiness, at least for me. Oh well, spring will come.

[F15Rules]

This week in the Lincolnshire Wolds has been a week of promising daytime blue skies with occasional wintry showers, with cloud relentlessly moving in at dusk..

On Thursday night the sky finally cleared at about 11pm..by that time I was just to tired and it felt jiust too cold to get a scope out.. so I just got my Vixen 8x32s out, sat on a garden chair, and just gazed at Orion for 10-12 minutes.

The sky by this time was lovely, over 20 stars visible inside Orion's outline with the naked eye, and the bins showed a sprinkling of faint stars all around the Belt region.

That short view was both uplifting and frustrating..uplifting because any clear sky view of Orion is uplifting.. frustrating because Orion is now slipping away in the west, and I've probably had just 3 or 4 decent 1-2 hour sessions with my favourite constellation since November, despite far more numerous days when the sun shone, only for cloud to take over as darkness fell..

..next hazard to.contend with will be the Moon..🥴

Clear Skies?? PAH!! 🤪😄

[Les Ewan]

The sky cleared for a couple of hours between 1am and 3am,and the seeing was quite good.With my 400mm Newt the Whirlpool galaxy's spiral structure was easily discernible  using a 20mm Kellner giving a power of 90X.Other galaxies stood out well too but as the clouds approached I ramped up to a 144X with a 12.5mm Orthoscopic  and took in couple of binaries, first Porrima (anyone else old enough to remember when it was called Arich😆1?),and then Izar(which also used to be called something else) Both binaries were well seen Izar the slightly clearer of the two.

The temperature was around 4C with a light breeze,this is not that warm but after a few sessions since Christmas in sub zero conditions it felt positively balmy.😎

[F15Rules]

Yes, Les, I'm old enough! (65 2 days ago😱).

I learned quite a lot of star names from almost memorising Patrick Moore's "Observers Book of Astronomy", a little pocket gem of a book back in the 1960's👍.

I actually picked one up on eBay a few years ago for about £2!

Dave