Hi Guys, following this thread with considerable interest, reliable prediction of good seeing conditions would be the holy grail of planetary observers... then again if I knew it might tell me I'm wasting my time imaging from my brissy backyard - ignorance is bliss.
Surrounded by tile roofed town houses I've often wondered how much (at least early evening) my poor seeing had to do with the more micro-level conditions here, but I'll be keeping an eye more to those isobars from now on.
It occurs that one of the biggest barriers to predicting seeing is the lack of an easy mechanism to measure it and to measure it consistently between observers. I often suspect that what one observer might rate as 6/10 seeing would be rated differently by others; terms such as "average", "good" etc are quite subjective and might reflect considerable differences in actual seeing conditions.
I wondered whether in the Webcam revolution whether a tool might be developed to objectively measure seeing much like photometers measure stellar magnitude - excuse my ignorance if this already exists. For example, by producing a measure of the range of deformation of any outline or object selected over a series of avi frames. If this could be easily done (some on you IT gurus) then there could be a multitude of consistent seeing measurements taken across the country that could be recorded and linked to the meteorology and from this perhaps a better means of predicting seeing might some
cheers,