Incredible seeing in Philippines

[Karls48]

Week ago I have returned from 3 moths stay in Philippines. We have to endure four typhoons, torrential rain and cloudy skies. But what has surprised me was incredible good seeing when sky cleared for hour or so. I had only 8X40 binoculars with me, but I have to say that in 40 years looking at night sky in Europe and Australia I have never experienced seeing like this. The stars were rock steady.

[iceman]

I'm not surprised by your experiences - Chris Go is one of the worlds best planetary imagers, and he lives in Cebu in the Phillipines.

He's often talked of 9/10 and 10/10 seeing, on an almost nightly basis.

But due to the typhoons etc, he can only image 6 months of the year :)

[kinetic]

Yes Mike he does have a great thing happening there that's for sure.
Not quite 9s and 10s nightly but definitely consistent above 6-7.

I hope Trevor had his scope going last night because here and
Broken Hill was superb...the best I have seen for about 6 months.

Steve

[pgc hunter]

The Tropics are generally renowned for awesome seeing, totally different world to the roaring forties down in the temperate (latin for toilet) climates.

All you need to do is look at the jetstream charts...you will want to live in Darwin, Broome and the Kimberelys...

[multiweb]

That's a very interesting thread. I would have always assumed the tropics were the worst for skies as it's humid and very rainy. A friend from Kuala Lumpur told me you can set your watch to 4:00pm every day when rains falls down in buckets before sunset later on. It is very humid. Sounds like the lack of jet stream makes up for it though in a big way. Rain at 4:00 , 10/10 seeing at night?... I could live with that. Maybe remote/water proof observatories in the area. The new "new mexico"?

[pgc hunter]

The problem is haze i.e. transparency, not actual atmospheric seeing. Haze is a problem in the tropics due to humidity and relatively stagnant air, unlike here in the south where humidity is low and there is more wind to disperse particulate matter. That same stagnant still air however is creating good seeing.

[Karls48]

Yes, transparency was not good, especially around the harvest time. At that time local farmers burn rice straw. Close to the horizon you cannot see stars at all at times. If I had telescope there I would not bother to point it lower then 45 deg.

[seanliddelow]

Sounds like my house, were I can see about 20 naked eye stars down to mag 2.5 :lol: