Rubbish seeing last night

[Hypernova]

It truly was terrible, the sky was clear as a bell to my untrained and the air seemed still. But the stars were twinkling like mad. I even trained my scope on Capella, which at around 11:30 was close to being overhead, and I defocused it and it looked like that it was at the bottom on a stream with water running over it.

It was impossible to focus a star to a tight point at any time through the night. Even after letting to scope cool for over 2.5 hours and have the finder freeze over and the secondary mist up. Surely a 30 second blast with a hair dryer on low wouldn't create such bad tube currents???

Moreover I completely failed to observe m78 in Orion which had hid behind clouds the night before. I was in the correct location but I couldn't detect anything there. Does this nebula have a low surface brightness or did LP scupper my attempt?

I did though get a great look in at m42 which at the time was peeking over the roof of a neighbour's house. The core was nice and bright and one of the faint extended "wings" became visible to the east. The were possible dust lanes or nebular structure observed in the SW portion of the core which were easy to spot. I think dark skies would really bring the fine structure out.

[brianb]

It was impossible to focus a star to a tight point at any time through the night. Even after letting to scope cool for over 2.5 hours and have the finder freeze over and the secondary mist up.

Yeah, that happens sometimes. I've known it to be so bad that it was hard to focus a 80mm refractor at x24 ... A slight breeze usually helps by keeping the air mixed, but last night it was different, the bad seeing was fairly clearly caused by an unstable layer in the middle/upper troposphere (3-5 km up), the same instability that's causing the heavy wintry showers that are afflicting some parts of the country.

[dlp]

Exactly my experience last night. Took 40 subs of M31 and a similar number of M42. Tried processing them today - absolute rubbish, went in the Trash.

David

[WayBig]

I had the same problem on friday, from inside, it looked like a classic night, cold, still (or so it appeared) but I couldnt focus any star to anything near a point and the detail on jupiter was all over the place.

[Lux1]

Umm, seeing appeared to be almost excellent in west cornwall.

I saw a number of dark bands across jupiter, and M31 M45 and the orion nubula where stunning.

Artic air is normally very clear as so little dust and polluition is suspended therein. I find that east winds bring poor seeing to me in cornwall.

Another factor is the presence of almost invisible ice-clouds in the upper atmosphere, these can create a shimmery effect at times, so I've read, but I am happy to be corrected!