Will it be cloudy?

So one of the best tools that folks seem to use is a website called, Astrospheric. Of course there are other Apps on your smart phone or on the web like Clearoutside. In this post I will focus on Astrospheric as its a fairly simple and a robust website for predicting when you can go outside to view the stars.

At a glance you can see that on Tues 3rd the evening is not going to be good for observing, this is because it’s going to be very cloudy. In the cloud cover near the bottom it is predicting the clouds cover to be 88%. Next to the Cloud cover you can see Transparency which is how clear the atmosphere is, think about smoke in the sky, this would mean the transparency is low. Finally, Seeing is a measure of how much movement of the sky above you. A good analogy I would say is seeing heat coming off of the ground and you can see how wavy “seeing” is.

Now looking at Figure 2, you can see that Wednesday the 4th is an ok evening for observation. Cloud cover is expected to be 0%, Transparency is average, and Seeing is below average.

Thanks for reading and clear skies!