[AZ-Observing] Re: Recording Seeing Conditions (was WOW!)

Interesting discussion. I've never been one to make seeing and transparency 
estimates, mostly because I consider my sketches a more complete record of the 
conditions at the time of an observation. It seems to me that observers make 
note of observing conditions for one of two reasons; either for personal use or 
to communicate those conditions to the larger astronomy community. It's this 
latter application where I have issues with the various scales used to grade 
seeing and transparency.
 
While there are some advanced amateurs who apply these ratings consistently in 
a way that other experienced amateurs can understand, the vast majority of 
observers--I'm talking about the worldwide community, here, not this discussion 
list--apply numeric ratings in such a widely non-uniform manner as to render 
them meaningless to anybody but themselves. If "Bill" in Wisconsin has never 
observed under a pristine sky, he has no idea what a 10 for transparency night 
looks like. He's never observed from a site with median seeing that's 
sub-arcsecond. "Bill's" best night might only be marginally better than a 
mediocre night at one of my mountain sites.
 
A classic example of how these subjective scales has worked their way into the 
psyche of the amateur community is the mythology surrounding Florida seeing. 
I've yet to see any hard data published on actual seeing in that part of North 
America. Yet, the surpluss of subjective "10 out of 10" ratings has led to this 
mythology that Florida has the best seeing in the world. Frankly, I don't 
buy--or, should I say, won't buy it until somebody publishes objective seeing 
data that backs up the claims.
 
Regards,
 
Bill in Flagstaff
 
-----Original Message-----
From: Brian Skiff <Brian.Skiff@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: az-observing@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 14:02:34 -0700 (MST)
Subject: [AZ-Observing] Re: Recording Seeing Conditions (was WOW!)

     Obviously I'm in the minority in this discussion, and will simply
say that I don't find it to be nearly as complicated as others are making
it out to be.  For what they're worth, the list of pairs I've used for
estimating seeing is here:

ftp://ftp.lowell.edu/pub/bas/dbls.fil

...and a file of estimates made mainly in the 1980s with the 7-inch
guidescope attached to the 'Pluto Camera', which I made while taking
plates with that instrument:

ftp://ftp.lowell.edu/pub/bas/seeing.vis


\Brian
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