My turn 17th November

[Clayton]

Not the greatest seeing but I managed to get the SEB blotch. As usual I am about last to do it :P
Jupiter is such a dynamic and surprising planet. It will be interesting to see if this is really the beginning of the SEB's return or just a teaser:shrug:
I guess only time will tell:)

[Paul Haese]

I reckon Rob its time to take a look at the cooling and maybe just check your collimation. I just don't see how I got great seeing at my place and you are no more than 20km away and you got bad seeing. Perhaps it was due to the turbulence caused by the hills face and the winds causing eddies as it passed over me and toward you. It was quite still that night though. I just would have expected you got similar conditions to me.

Nice result all the same.

[Clayton]

Thanks Paul,
Collimation I don't think is the issue , as their were brief moments of great clarity in the feed.
Cooling though could be an issue (mainly as I have none!:shrug:) (Future project:D ). To describe the effect, it was as though someone was racking in and out of focus (mostly out), very little of the jelly wobbles. I could be wrong but I have been told, and it seems logical, that the in/out of focus effect is a result of higher/fast moving inhomogeneities in the air, whilst the wobbles are likely to be local effects.:question:
I expect that the thin layer of warmer air adjacent to the mirror as the system cools, which you SCTers and similar closed tube system address with active cooling would result in a system that appeared to lack good collimation, frustrating attempts to achieve as good a focus as you know the system is capable of. And of course the tube currents are a bit easier to diagnose.
I have a Newtonian system (as I'm sure you know) and have long thought about cooling. Perhaps as you say, the time has come to try:)
My initial thought was to mount a simple fan on the rear as a first step, but I am happy to consider other arrangements.

[Paul Haese]

Rob anything is worth a try. Even a simple fan will give you some benefits. Varying degrees of cooling will give increased benefits.

Yes fast seeing seems to be caused by a number of possibilities, but certainly an interaction with the higher layers and the middle layers seems the likely cause. I think most likely it is two layers at right angles but not being an atmospheric specialist it is only guessing.

When you come to doing a cooling system I can give you a hand if you like. I have spare peltiers here with Ali too, left over from the SDM project.

[Clayton]

Thanks Paul,
Very kind of you to offer your help:thanx:
I guess I should do the thermometer thing to set some sort of baseline.
I will try to organize something this week and try to log some data:thumbsup:
Being a small open tube system, it may be that a fan will be adequate. But I must admit a fair amount of ignorance re peltier cooled systems.
It may be that the system that gets me to equilibrium quickest is preferred.