Brisbane Seeing

[gaseous]

I'm not sure if the residual smoke haze in Brisbane has any effect, but recently the seeing in Brisbane has seemed quite a bit better than normal, given the usual heat and humidity. On Saturday night, whilst the transparency was pretty ratty (less than 1km from a major shopping centre), the seeing was about the best I've experienced in ages. Not normally one for double star observing, I had a crack at 32 Orionis, and at 255x in my 8" dob, it was definitely splittable despite only a 1.4" separation. I'm not sure if this is supposed to be good or bad, but the stars were super sharp even at high magnitudes. There were 6 stars in the Trapezium too, which isn't normally the case at my house. Be nice if these conditions continued towards the end of the month.

[brisen]

Hi Patrick

I was imaging on Friday and Saturday nights from home and the seeing was exceptional - I was consistently getting images with a FWHM of less than 1.9 arcsecs/pixel, one was down to 1.5 arcsecs/pixel with many around the 1.6 to 1.7 arcsecs/pixel - normally it is around the 2.4 arcsecs/pixel. It actually continued improving as the night went on but the cloud thwarted any attempt at imaging.

Brian

[gaseous]

I'm guessing there must be a correlation between the seeing and the recent haze. Maybe the solids in the air are joining with the moisture and dropping out of the atmosphere. A lame theory, I'm sure.

[doug mc]

Yes the seeing for doubles was great up here on Tamborine. I had the 6 inch newt out and stellar diffraction patterns were textbook. There was little wind, so that adds as well.

[rrussell1962]

Yes, excellent seeing for a change. For fun I have been looking at double stars (mainly in Orion and Canis Major) with the Obsession 18". Wednesday is looking good too.

[codemonkey]

Yeah we've had a good run here lately too. That said, seeing used to be good a lot here, but 2019 saw lots of ****ty seeing, so it almost feels like a return to normality.