Wonderfull Clear Nights Now

[glend]

Anyone living around the east coast of NSW would be experiencing some of the best astro nights of 2016 right now. The three past nights have been great each seemingly better than the one before. Good seeing, just a slight zepher of a breeze to keep the dew down, humidity not too bad, and no moon to interfere. I have been imaging for over six hours each night. What a change from the past six months of cloud, rain, wind, more cloud, etc.
And more to come, the forecast for the rest of this weeks looks like more of the same excellent conditions.
Get your gear out and enjoy these nights.:eyepop:

[AG Hybrid]

While the clouds are currently away. Atmospheric stability has been poor in Sydney. Just 2 nights ago I had my Mak out and I could see stars at zenith twinkling. This translated at the eyepiece to a view reminiscent to looking at a star map sewn onto a dark flag in the wind.

[Atmos]

So such luck down here in Melbourne. Rain Monday&Tuesday, cloud Wednesday until at least midnight. Tonight looks like it'll have high level cloud coning in not too long after astronomical twilight and lifting just before astronomical dawn, rain Friday night :P

[glend]

Well Sydney produces so much rising hot air i am not surprised. :lol:

[NoTan2]

Unfortunately, someone around here has (presumably) decided to do some back-burning or whatever. The view outside has an orange tinge to it. Lots of smoke in the sky.

Hopefully it's short lived.

[Somnium]

it has been really good, i missed out on some good conditions on Tuesday due to mount problems so i did the 4 hour round trip last night and got it sorted out. lucky i did, i got 8 hours of great data. but going to bed at 2:00am has kinda killed me at work today.

[75BC]

We've had prescribed burn offs for the last few weeks here in Perth. I got my scope out for the first time in months due to being allergic to the cold and everything had a fuzz around it from the smoke in the air. :mad2:

Since then it only seems to have gotten worse.

[glend]

Well yes for those that must work it must be frustrating, been there done that, the rest of my life is my time now. But i do admit that i am not out standing in a field somewhere all night long, but rather getting my system running in the observatory and then retiring to the house where i can monitor it remotely via Teamviewer/wifi. Thankfully my site is still dark enough for RGB imaging when the moon is out of the way.
Aidan is there not some keen local that you could co-op into being arms and legs for you at the dark site?

[Somnium]

it is at a family home and there is generally people there most weekends but when it comes to troubleshooting and playing with a very expensive set up, i would prefer to do it myself

[SimmoW]

Yeah we had a couple of brief good nights, friday and sunday nights especially. Glad the weather worsened in melbourne, i was stuffed after the trips to Nhill nad Heathcote, and after experimenting with fast imaging, i have 3,900 subs to review!

[AstralTraveller]

Yes, it has been nice. Amazing - no cloud and no moon. Miracles will never cease.



That is truer than you may think.



They have moved down here: billowing smoke cloud across half the sky and the smell of bushfire in he air.

[glend]

Burn off season i suspect. I saw the smoke up Newcastle way yesterday but the breeze blew it out to sea by dark.
Another clear night here but the seeing was not so good, my guide star was jumping around until late in the night when the elevation increased to above 50 degrees. Probably worse nightbof the last four.

[multiweb]

The clear skies with excellent seeing are in WA right now all week. Someone must have bought some serious gear on the east coast... :confuse3:

[Wavytone]

Yes me... 130 mm triplet APO and 70mm quad ED APO, mount and eyepieces.:rofl:

Bushfire at Llandilo, due west of our home, sky is totally obscured and the smell is pretty bad. Staying indoors with the windows shut and aircon on as it's still quite warm.

It's a bad start to the fire season with at least 1 house lost, though the cops have caught the morons that started it. It's a pity they can't be tied to a post in the path of their own fire.

[glend]

Another great night around my area, at least until the cloud moved in around 3:45am. Very strange that is was warming up as the night progressed, from around 12C at 2am to 17C at 4am, but still very low humidity for a coastal area. I had to stop the imaging run early but can't really complain because the past week has been so good, and it looks like we have another three nights of good conditions to come in this weather pattern.

I see that they arrested a 17yo kid for starting that fire near Penrith. Hopefully there is no back burning going on in the next few days down towards the Blue Mtns. With the forecast windy change coming through today I would hope the RFS has enough sense to refrain.

[gregbradley]

Yes the skies are amazing at the moment. I am hoping it continues for a few more nights as forecast.

Its been a fair while since we've had clear nights and no moon. Usually the pattern is clearer during the moon weeks and cloudier when its the new moon for some reason.

Greg.

[Shiraz]

even down here has been good - the last week or so provided about as much clear sky as the whole of the past winter.

[andyc]

crazy good run of clear skies. Had my new camera out a few nights, but can't take advantage of all the clear sky time as I'd be knackered for work! And not enough time to process & learn imaging techniques, so best strategy is to point & grab photons, worry about how to combine them into something resembling a colour picture another time... :rofl:

[pjphilli]

I live in a north western suburb of Sydney. Lots of good skies ruined by bush
burn-offs lately so when I stick my head out the door I do the sniff test -
any smell of burning bush, it looks like fizzer - it is worse when there is no
breeze to perhaps blow the smoke away. Always something, but it is better than having the house burnt down! Peter