[AZ-Observing] Re: Seeing Conditions at a Dark Site


Thanks to everybody for their thoughts.  I have a better idea now what to
expect.  The situation is actually quite promising.  I am getting decent
seeing in my backyard fairly consistently so I can observe my favorite
bright objects (planets/double stars) from home and go out in the desert or
the high country for the dim stuff which is not so dependent on good seeing
anyway.  I particularly like the idea of going north/high in the summer and
south/low in the winter - I hate freezing :o).

This arrangement provides a complete change in scenery and subject matter
that is most enjoyable.  I am still stunned by my first trip to Cherry Rd.
Simply seeing the Milky Way as the most prominent feature in the sky made
that trip worthwhile.  And I cannot believe what I saw in Sagittarius.  From
home the Milky Way is invisible and the southern sky is obliterated to about
40 degrees altitude by the Mesa light dome but at Cherry Rd I found one
amazing object after another all night long.  Never had time to look
anywhere else.

Yes this is going to be a great hobby and learning the personality of the
different sites will be a big part of the fun.

Thanks again

Regards

Bill Wood
Fountain Hills, AZ


> -----Original Message-----
> From:  Tom Polakis
>
> At 09:18 PM 9/4/02 -0700, Bob Erdmann wrote:
>
> >The best that I can tell you is that if you use an observing site regularly,
> >you tend to get a sense about its observing "personality"...
>
>
> Quite a few people in metropolitan Phoenix are now using the Vekol Ranch
> site.  One aspect of the site's "personality" is that seeing goes bad some
> time between 10 p.m. and midnight on most nights.  At the same moment the
> seeing goes bad, you feel a gentle Easterly breeze that is 10 degrees
> cooler than it had been up until that time.  The two events are
> related, as
> Brian alluded to.
>

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