Huge Fog

[adamsp123]

Nice and clear till dusk, of course all set up now it's like out of a movie the amount of darn fog that has appeared ..blast

[Beulah]

We had a great long hike this afternoon in beautifully clear weather...sunset was clear...now, however!!!

[Catanonia]

Been totally fog bound in Sandbach all day. Vis down to 100m earlier and not much better now..

[Gary1]

fog here all day in birmingham and still is...ah well there's always the tv

[Moonshane]

blumming foggy here too in Stockport - lovely orange sky everywhere after a fine sunny day.

[dweller25]

It's clear here in Bury but seeing is poor - Mars has a river flowing over it !!!

[darlingtonskies]

in Darlington - been cloudy all day and there are breaks in cloud. just seen mars but by the time i moved around it was covered. so want to use my new barlow lens x3.

[Talitha]

Try some planet viewing when it's foggy, it seems to steady things up. The best view i ever had of Mars was when the fog was so thick i couldn't see it naked eye any longer.

[Beulah]

Talitha is so right - I had been struggling to get good views of Mars in a clear sky all this year until a few nights ago when some cloud/fog came over...I perservered and the detail on this planet was incredible, and it could take some high mags!

I can't press "submit" on this post until I say this...

Sorry about the F in Fog....

(I've tried to find a Youtube clip of this famous blooper being uttered by the legendary Mr Fish, but alas...)

[darlingtonskies]

sorry, just get the grasp. try and have a look at the planets if its foggy and light cloud or just foggy. i take it you have to know the sky well to get a grasp of where the planets are

[Talitha]

"i take it you have to know the sky well to get a grasp of where the planets are "

Not well.. just well enough.

Right now Mars and Saturn are the main events as far as planets go. My sky is dark and i can easily locate them without optical aid but if you're under light polluted skies, i'm not sure how easy/hard it would be to see them.

Mars (in Cancer) rises mid-afternoon, culminates (reaches its highest altitude) at about 11pm at about 60 degrees altitude, and sets just before sunrise. Saturn (in Virgo) rises due east at about 9pm, culminates (38 degrees altitude) at about 3am, and sets after sunrise.

[darlingtonskies]

oh yeah, sorry

I can now locate them by naked eye with application on iphone and have looked through them easily through telescope however my barlow x3 aint work either with the wide angle 25m (mag 108) nor my 10m (mag 270) (practical magnification is 260 for my scope) just could not focus.

Just got confused about seeing them better in the fog.

the light pollution was bad due to clouds, that would make a difference???

sorry, 3rd time out with telescope. can locate the planets in like 5 mins from set up.

[AndyH]

My best ever view of Saturn was through a thin layer of haze in the summer, some years back. Everything but the brightest stars were gone.

High level cloud and thin fog usually means steady air above, so you can crank that magnification.

Andy.

[Talitha]

Ah, i see now.. sorry about misunderstanding you, i thought you needed to know where the planets were. TBH, i wouldn't have been able to see Mars that night if the scope hadn't already been tracking it before the fogbank rolled up the hill. Merely knowing where Mars was located in the sky wouldn't have helped me too much.

Regarding the clouds, yes they make a difference... fog is good, clouds are bad (unless there's a drought ).

[darlingtonskies]

kewlio,

i will remember that as there are a lot of foggy nights here for some reason.