It's not a kind if night where I would bundle up try to clear the dome and hope it would open while I wait and huddle by the heater.
I've heard the transparency is good for imaging. I was going to travel to a friends house and take some telescopes out there. I figured we'd look briefly from his dark sky site for maybe 20 minutes then watch movies.
Then another friend called me back. I caller George to chat about weather conditions then he invited me out to his place to so some remote imaging. Remote imaging is where you sit inside and control the telescope from a warm room. Tonight remote imaging sounds a lit better than sitting inside the observatory. When I loaded up the car today with some equipment my lungs hurt from the cold air.
In other observing news I woke up early at about 5:30am I ventured out in the cold to look at Saturn this morning. I couldn't stay out long and had to check out Venus as well. Venus looked so bright this morning I thought at first it was a jet aircraft or helicopter.
I stayed out maybe 20 minutes and my hands started to grow numb and hurt from the cold. I wasn't wearing any gloves and the near zero degree temperatures may it a brutal viewing adventure. I was happy to get back in a warm house and go back to bed.
Saturn looked wonderful but my scope wasn't cooled off and perhaps some haze made seeing less than ideal. A 40mm was fine the 15mm showed some degrading if the image not a lot of detail in the 1500mm focal length nexstar 4se. The 8mm was showing only a large fuzzy planet. Venus seemed much better for some reason. It almost looked like I'd see surface detail when viewing it with the 40mm. The 15mm if course would not show surface detail, just a larger ball of gas which is half illuminated by the sun.
Here's a shot of the cloud and sky conditions near sunset.
Clouds will increase after midnight tonight.
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