Geoff
It was almost completely clouded over 99% of the time.
The only saving grace was my talk with Mark on optics, quality assessment of mirrors and his future plans..., exciting times ahead for Mark.
We had some nice and crisp views of 47 Tuc and Orion Nebula. Closed gates at Midnight.
Sorry to hear it was mostly clouded out, but glad you got a bit of viewing in.
Since the moon is new about mid-week, is anyone thinking about going out next weekend? Should still be good conditions and the weather is looking promising so far, even though it's a bit far away for forecasts!
That is very odd, another "Local Conditions" example, as it was perfectly clear, with good seeing, just north of there (at Lake Macquarie) until about 3am. I guess the cloud was slowly moving up the coast from the south.
The recent 'local conditions' pattern here, despite a BOM partly cloudy forecast, is perfectly clear day with breeze dying off after dark, occassional cloud at dusk but it clears before midnight. I have had a couple of good imaging nights after waiting it out.. Very odd but i will take what i can get.
But then again i don't have to drag my gear to the PC.
Its hard to trust any one source now days... I've been using 7Timer in conjunction with Cloudfreenight, and the BOM. So far better than 80% accuracy in my decisions to setup or not.
Just saw that the BOM has a hail storm warning up for the PC area this afternoon, and its already dumping on the Hawkesbury region. Absolutely clear here. The problem with these distant storms after dark is that lightening travels along way and buggers up imaging.
