Melbourne conditions last night

[Saturn488]

Was anyone in Melbourne outside with their telescope last night? I went out around 19:30 til around 23:00 until the clouds came rolling in.

Had numerous issues with PHD2, I could not get a decent guide as it took more than 10 minutes for it configure then would complain about the RA and DEC. The best SNR I could get was 20.

I feel the conditions wern't the clearest last night even though it looked pretty damn clear with the naked eye!

[Atmos (Colin)]

I was up in Heathcote last night and 10 steps from my caravan the skies were pretty good. Better that Wednesday night with the 25+km/h winds all night.

Could have been a really bad jet stream but I didn’t pay any attention.

[Lognic04 (Logan)]

Yes, something was definitely off, my stars were very blobby (at 135mm!) after autofocus.

[Shiraz (Ray)]

It was up there with the best I have ever seen here in SA. phd was almost flatline and the FWHM was well below the system design assumption of 2 arcsec. Have not had a look at the data, but it was pretty speccy on the acquisition display.



Cheers Ray

[jamespierce (James)]

My dome in western Victoria ran ok for the first half of the night, but I think there was some very thin high cloud or moisture. It automatically closed around 2am with very patchy cloud.



I've seen the same thing a lot lately... My boltwood doesn't report sky temperatures anything like what I expect for a clear sky which says to me there is moisture up there. My FWHM was up and down around ~4... In good conditions I'll be solid 2.something.

[Startrek (Martin)]

Chrys

Problem with PHD2 could have been high Jetstream +100kts and / or high level cloud
Do you calibrate on a good night near the celestial equator and north meridian and save it ( auto restore calibration ) ?? As long as you don’t rotate your guide camera you can reuse a good saved calibration for months and months . I have to strip down and rebuild my rig each time and reuse my saved calibration , I’m guiding in around 20 seconds. Also have you saved a bad pixel map and built a dark frame library in PHD2 ? Helps with finding and locking on to a good guide star even in poor conditions.
Cheers
Martin