I don’t think it’s the clouds themselves – I think it’s that the Moon isn’t shining brightly anymore and so it’s actually gotten quite dark outside.
December 21, 2010
February 7, 2010
Scrubbed
Endeavour at T-4 hours
I took the family down to Titusville, Florida last night to watch the last night launch of the Space Shuttle program. We arrived around 11:30 and found the town very full. We found a parking spot (for $20) close to Launch View Park and settled in for the evening. Unfortunately, with 10 minutes until launch (at 4:39am) the launch was scrubbed because of whether, particularly clouds. It was frustrating, to say the least, but it was neat to be there and the anticipation was fun. What wasn’t fun was sleeping (or trying to sleep) in the van with my wife and four oldest boys. I love my Sienna, but the driver’s seat is not a good place to sleep. Of course, that’s probably a good thing most of the time… Anyway, I doubt if we’re going to make the 2 hour drive (we’re staying near St. Augustine) again tonight for the 4:14am launch, but I will be getting up and going to the beach to see if I can see it. I’ll have my still and video cameras and believe I should be able to see it if it does launch. If the launch is delayed further, we may think about going down again, but I doubt if we’d sleep in the van the next time. 
I’ll try to post some pictures (I don’t have many) later.
August 9, 2009
August 8, 2009
Sunset on 8/8/09
I’ve been very busy lately and haven’t gotten out too much – I’m hoping to get out more soon, but hazy skies like this have kept me from doing too much viewing. It was very pretty, but makes for lousy astronomy…
July 7, 2009
Sunset on 7/7/09
The clouds are pretty tonight – there was actually a purple cast that didn’t really show up in this image. We’ve been (finally) getting some rain and so I haven’t been able to do any viewing this week, but I’ll take the rain.
May 22, 2009
No stargazing tonight
Clouds again, but a pretty sunset. I hope that I can get some observing done soon. Arrgh – just clouds almost every night.
December 8, 2008
The Moon Through Clouds on 12/8/08
Tonight, with the clouds covering the majority of the sky, was not a great night for star gazing. There was a neat sort of moonbow effect though. You can sort of see it in the image above. The clouds refracted the light from the Moon into a bit of a rainbow. There was also a nice sunset (because of the clouds, of course):
At scouts this evening, I took a telescope and binoculars to let the boys (and their parents) see the Moon. Even through clouds, she looked great in the scope and I think everyone thought it was neat. And, of course, it completed the Astronomy badges we’ve been working on! So all around, a good night even though I won’t be getting any more imaging done.
October 19, 2008
September 3, 2008
Sunset on 9/3/08
The sunset was pretty tonight and it’s really nice out, but with the number of clouds it doesn’t seem that I’d be able to do any astrophotography this evening.
August 25, 2008
Stormy Weather
It’s been cloudy for several days now and it looks like there’s another week of clouds in store for us here, because of the hurricaine. Of course, we can use the rain and I’m glad we’re not having severe weather. Naturally this means that I’m not going to be getting any new astrophotos for a while so I’ve re-collimated my scope and cleaned the corrector plate and mirror again. I also tonight took a number of flat frames with the D50 camera and I’m reprocessing some old images of Orion to see if they look any better. I’ll do a post once it stops processing.
