FreeLists / az-observing / [AZ-Observing] Re: Seeing Conditions at a Dark Site

["Kevin Bays" <bayskevin@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Bill,

I think there are certain instances where you can have your cake and eat it
too . . . have very dark skies and also steady seeing.  Conversely, I've had
awful seeing together with severe light pollution in an urban setting.  Or
you can have just the good seeing but not the inky black skies, or vice
versa.

Every site seems to have a personality.  And you can catch the best or worst
of a particular location at a particular moment.  As far as seeing is
concerned, a usually great site can be rotten . . . sometimes, and a
typically poor site can be terrific, sometimes.  The weather matters, and a
good bit of luck.  I'm not sure if that answers your question, but that's my
general opinion.

 I have a hypothesis that rural desert sites are more likely to have steady
seeing if they are not near mountains.  Some mountain sites are of course
well known for good seeing (thus the observatories thereon).  However, I've
made repeated visits to some sites next to or in mountains (albeit not on
the higher peaks) which I felt tended to have unsteady conditions.  The flip
side is that such sites may have outstanding transparency and darkness.  The
best thing may be to try out a variety of sites to see which best meet your
needs in terms of convenience and suitability for the astro applications you
have in mind (planet viewing, deep sky observing, photography, etc).

Clear skies

----- Original Message -----
From: William R Wood <wmrwood@xxxxxxx>
To: <az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, September 04, 2002 2:50 PM
Subject: [AZ-Observing] Seeing Conditions at a Dark Site


>
> As a novice observer I have a general question about the difference
between
> seeing (turbulence) conditions in the Phoenix metro area and out in the
> desert.
>
> I went to Cherry Rd last Friday.  Weather was perfect.  Dark, clear, calm
> and transparent.  But the seeing was poor, too jiggly to observe planets
or
> double stars.  Still great for DSOs however.  I was out in my backyard the
> night before and the weather pattern was similar.  At home, Fountain
Hills,
> on Thursday the seeing was quite good and I watched double stars with no
> problems.
>
> So my question is whether this situation was an anomoly or is it common
for
> seeing to be better in the city than out in the desert?
>
> Regards
>
> Bill Wood
>
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This message is from the AZ-Observing mailing list.  See this message's
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This is a discussion list.  Please send personal inquiries directly to
the message author.  In other words, do not use "reply" for personal
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