Cloudy again.

[Franklin]

As above.

[Moonshed]

When we lived in Ayrshire, Scotland, bad weather was the norm, it was to be expected, the Celestron rarely came out of its foot locker in the garage. Then 13 years ago we moved back to sunny England and settled in North Norfolk. We got off to such a good start with more clear skies in one week than I had seen in a whole year in Scotland. It was so good that six years ago I even got into astrophotography and spent bucket loads of cash on new gear. Things went well at first, then it started to get cloudy on a more regular basis until we have the situation today whereby the weather is heading towards how things were in Scotland! You can’t win!

Cheers

Keith

Edited October 7, 2023 by Moonshed

[Clarkey]

These days if I get any orange on 'Clear Outside' I get quite excited. If I get green, I need clean pants🤣🤣

[Soupir94]

Not holding my breath but...

[WolfieGlos]

55 minutes ago, Clarkey said:

These days if I get any orange on 'Clear Outside' I get quite excited. If I get green, I need clean pants🤣🤣

So true 😂

BBC has our skies clear for the next 3 days including tonight.

Reality? It’s patchy at best tonight. But I have the scope out, so if I get some frames I’ll take it. 

[Mr Spock]

I'm trying not to get too excited, but, I see green ahead for Thursday...

[Budgie1]

I'm just going to leave this image of the last 24 hour figures from my weather station here with a big icon and maybe some 😭🤿

............and it's still raining!

[pipnina]

I just got back from my first visual session in a year (!) tonight.

Sadly the visibility was poor despite there being no clouds. I choke it up to a mixture of bad luck and the weather still being warm and holding lots of water (plus I am at the southern coast)

But at a bortle 4 site the milky way was still visible from Aquila to Cassiopeia. Spied the ring, the veil, andromeda and both jupiter and saturn which seemed quite crisp but still a little wobbly due to being so low down.

Maybe they could have been sharper, but my laser showed my 250mm dob's secondary was out of kilter again, and I didn't pack my allen keys! Doh!

Unfortunately none of the sights were as spectacular as this time last year, all seemed muddier and fainter despite the veil (both major halves) being slightly salvaged by my UHC. Andromeda was a dull grey smudge whereas last year it poured into my eyes and gave me a crisp view of the dust band near the core.

I am hoping for some good opportunities and weather in winter as I want to try my OIII and UHC filters out on orion subjects!

I also took my new medium format film cam (Bronica ETRS) with me and took some snaps with it sat on my star adventurer. I'll develop the roll soonish to find out if there's anything much there. One shot I think got totally blown out by people with ultra-bright torches (You can see perfectly fine without them here! grrrrr!) and half way through a 17 minute  landscape shot of the beach and coastline it got photobombed by a ferry with 2000 lights on board!

Either way it was worth going as these opportunities are seemingly increasingly rare.

Here's a little snap I took with my Pixel6 resting on the car's windscreen.

On the menu for tomorrow: Back to our usual scheduled water vapor blanket

And the rest of the week? torrential rain...

[LongJohn54]

16 hours ago, Moonshed said:

When we lived in Ayrshire, Scotland, bad weather was the norm, it was to be expected, the Celestron rarely came out of its foot locker in the garage. Then 13 years ago we moved back to sunny England and settled in North Norfolk. We got off to such a good start with more clear skies in one week than I had seen in a whole year in Scotland. It was so good that six years ago I even got into astrophotography and spent bucket loads of cash on new gear. Things went well at first, then it started to get cloudy on a more regular basis until we have the situation today whereby the weather is heading towards how things were in Scotland! You can’t win!

Cheers

Keith

After 30 hours of continuous heavy rain there are currently floods all over Scotland.  Our river (The Luggie) is generally 40cm deep with (rare) highs of 150cm and lows of 14cm.  It was 222cm earlier, not too far below the 249cm record set on 11 December 1994.  If it continues to rain heavily overnight that record could go.

For the first time in 10 years water has been tracking along the roof runners of my obsy and is running down the inside wall and onto the floor.   A flooded obsy! I never thought I'd say that.  Tomorrow I'll lift the rubber floor tiles and dry it all out.

[Nicola Fletcher]

I left for the airport at 5.30 this morning and Orion was high in the sky and looking fantastic. I’d have loved to get my 3” refractor out for an hour. Really hoping for a bit of a clear spell as the autumn comes in - here’s hoping.

[Mandy D]

14 minutes ago, Nicola Fletcher said:

I left for the airport at 5.30 this morning and Orion was high in the sky and looking fantastic. I’d have loved to get my 3” refractor out for an hour. Really hoping for a bit of a clear spell as the autumn comes in - here’s hoping.

Lovely! I remember driving through Glen Coe and seeing Orion on New Years Eve one year. I'd never seen so many stars. We pulled over at the next layby and stood there for ages gazing up at it. Not like that here, this morning, we have fog.

I hope you asre going somewhere better than here and have a great trip.

[Moonshed]

17 minutes ago, Mandy D said:

Lovely! I remember driving through Glen Coe and seeing Orion on New Years Eve one year. I'd never seen so many stars. We pulled over at the next layby and stood there for ages gazing up at it. Not like that here, this morning, we have fog.

I hope you asre going somewhere better than here and have a great trip.

What a magnificent combination, the brooding atmosphere of Glen Coe and the majestic Orion constellation. Wow!

[Nicola Fletcher]

30 minutes ago, Mandy D said:

Lovely! I remember driving through Glen Coe and seeing Orion on New Years Eve one year. I'd never seen so many stars. We pulled over at the next layby and stood there for ages gazing up at it. Not like that here, this morning, we have fog.

I hope you asre going somewhere better than here and have a great trip.

Thank you! I’m off to Madrid and Seville which have clear skies forecast but light pollution of course. Lots of sun though!

[Mandy D]

2 minutes ago, Nicola Fletcher said:

Thank you! I’m off to Madrid and Seville which have clear skies forecast but light pollution of course. Lots of sun though!

Have a great time. We're off to Fuertaventura in just over a week. I think this is a great time of year to get away from the UK.

[tomato]

For the last 3 days I have been patiently waiting for the Southern edge of this cloud bank to move 100 miles North. I don’t think it’s going to happen. 
 

Remote imaging is getting ever more attractive…

[WolfieGlos]

After my pessimistic post earlier, incredibly it actually cleared up a bit here and I left the scope capturing frames until 5am. Lots of patchy cloud around though so virtually every other frame I think will be cloud affected, PHD2 was beeping that frequently anyway. 

When I packed it up at 5am the Moon was clearly amongst some haze so I’ll definitely lose some images. Like above, Orion was visible and that’s the first time for me since earlier this year, positioned right above my local annoying streetlight, which the council finally put a shield on 2 weeks ago!  Coincidentally about the last time we had a clear sky here too…

[Mr Spock]

Sunny and warm here at the moment. However...

That's the view straight up, sun to the bottom. This is typical of the 'clear sky' I'm getting.

[pipnina]

29 minutes ago, Mr Spock said:

Sunny and warm here at the moment. However...

 

That's the view straight up, sun to the bottom. This is typical of the 'clear sky' I'm getting.

Despite some people really wanting one, images like this make me glad that plymouth doesn't have an airport and is out of the line of fire for most national and international flights!

[LongJohn54]

We've had light rain overnight and all morning.   Nothing like the deluge of yesterday.  So the Luggie is back to a more normal 'high' and the obsy is drying out nicely.  The black marks in the far corner will scrub up easily and once dry I'll move everything over and lift the tiles off the other side and dry that out.

 

 

[bosun21]

1 hour ago, Mr Spock said:

Sunny and warm here at the moment. However...

That's the view straight up, sun to the bottom. This is typical of the 'clear sky' I'm getting.

Your photo is a mirror image of my skies at the moment as well. Sure is depressing.

[bosun21]

1 hour ago, LongJohn54 said:

We've had light rain overnight and all morning.   Nothing like the deluge of yesterday.  So the Luggie is back to a more normal 'high' and the obsy is drying out nicely.  The black marks in the far corner will scrub up easily and once dry I'll move everything over and lift the tiles off the other side and dry that out.

 

 

The Luggie? Is that in the Kirkintiloch area?

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

Clouds; The reason why I've decided to cut down to one do-it-all quality refractor and binoculars. Not being a collector of things (or very well off) a house cluttered with astro gear worth a few quid when the stuff is hardly used doesn't make sense.

If the sky looks OK then I'm out but I give up obsessing over forecasts unless I'm planning on going away to a dark site.

[pipnina]

2 minutes ago, ScouseSpaceCadet said:

Clouds; The reason why I've decided to cut down to one do-it-all quality refractor and binoculars. Not being a collector of things (or very well off) a house cluttered with astro gear worth a few quid when the stuff is hardly used doesn't make sense.

If the sky looks OK then I'm out but I give up obsessing over forecasts unless I'm planning on going away to a dark site.

I too have considered gutting my setup for a smaller, more travel friendly one so I could go on holiday to places with good astro weather, and potentially move country entirely without leaving my kit behind, plus improving my setup and teardown time.

I also am unlikely to be able to drive soon so if I could get a kit that would fit into motorbike-sized storage that would also be brilliant.

[ScouseSpaceCadet]

Just now, pipnina said:

I too have considered gutting my setup for a smaller, more travel friendly one so I could go on holiday to places with good astro weather, and potentially move country entirely without leaving my kit behind, plus improving my setup and teardown time.

I also am unlikely to be able to drive soon so if I could get a kit that would fit into motorbike-sized storage that would also be brilliant.

There's plenty of info here for you to reach that goal...

Makes sense to me. If the climate suddenly changes for the better and half the city lights start to be switched off then I'll reinvest... 🙄

 

[tomato]

If all the imagers on SGL who are getting pi**ed off with the UK weather sold up and pooled their funds, just think what a rig we could have set up in Spain, New Mexico or Chile. But I suppose we would never agree on the scope/camera configuration or which object to image…