Poor seeing in these weather conditions?

[cathalferris]

Am I the only one that seems to have seeing that's really really bad over the past few days? The "lake effect" of the Irish Sea is making for hugely unstable airflows overhead on the west coast of Ireland, and i'd be pretty sure that it's the same in most places in the UK with the North Sea being the "lake".

I was out last night very well wrapped up with the intention of getting a few Jupiter captures with the 8". However I even had trouble focusing with the level of blur caused by the poor seeing that was there. (Collimated, temperature adjusted etc.) I had Jupiter wandering around by up to about 5 arcsec in still local conditions and hugely boiling in appearance.

I'm going to try stacking if only for the practice..

I've also noticed I have a stack of dust on the webcam chip - so time to get the ispropyl out.

I then went to using the eyepiece, and it appeared that transparency was shot also, M1 was hard to see, NGC 7331 was visible but that was about it, and the Trapezium - well that looked like a set of Christmas tree lights in a windstorm with the seperations and PA changing a lot.

I had steered clear of the mulled wine and hot whiskies too!

[Mr Spock]

The jet stream is running right through Britain north to south right now. That usually puts a stop on things.