March 14, 2010: What part of 'clear' don't you understand?

Bob Ayers

The NOAA forecasters seem to be having a difficult time.

As of early Sunday, the localized NOAA forecast for my Willow Springs 3000' site for Sun Mon Tue Wed nights was: mostly clear; clear; mostly clear; mostly clear. Yea!

I decided to visit the site first on the "mostly clear" Sunday (bird in the hand etc; I was busy on Saturday alas). But at 3pm, just before I was going to leave, Kevin kindly emailed me and told me it was looking bad. So I say to myself: "Thanks Kevin, no big deal, tomorrow is that NOAA 'clear' night."

Monday. I drive down 101 under a continuous haze. Hmmm. Aha, as I approach Hollister I can see that there is less haze to the south of me. I arrive at Willow 3000 and about 5:30pdt. There are parts of the sky that qualify as "blue" or "bluish". The main negative is contrails -- oh my contrails. I can count a dozen long contrails of various ages. Some have widened to where they are twenty degrees across. Together they cover most of the sky. Hmmm.

Optimistically (they did say "clear") I set up the bent eight-inch and do some chores like running the generator for a bit (it's good to run it every couple of months) and check out the pond and the masses of flowers -- mainly shootingstars.

At sunset it is less contrail-y (fewer planes?) but cloud in the west extends solid up to 45d and then extends as cobweb-y haze past the zenith. It isn't great in the north and east either. At close to the end of astro-twilight at 8:30 I can see the zodiacal light and the milky way. I can also see several other, similar structures in the sky that are less cosmic. Will it improve as things cool off? At least there's no dew -- yet.

I decide to peek at eye-candy in the Orion-Monoceros area, which is the only part of the sky that really looks starry. (I can see six of the seven stars of the big dipper, and I can see most but usually not all of the pattern of Leo.)

In the eight-inch, M42 is "just OK". I move up to see what the Flame Nebula looks like. Oh my. I am using an eyepiece with a 1 1/2 degree field and the glow surrounding zeta is one degree across. I retreat from that scary eyepiece view and am sitting back contemplating when an airplane flies through Ori and Mon and leaves a large expanding contrail in the night sky. I take that As A Sign and pack up and leave. I have had three decent observing nights at Willow 3000 *since Labor Day*. (Contrast with fifteen decent nights from Sep06 to 15Mar07)

I believe that the winter weather pattern in the Panoche Pass area has shifted since 06-07. Back then, it was fairly common to see ground fog below my 3000-foot site. The last two years we've seen a lot of "high fog" -- a layer above the Diablo Range that is very humid and turns into haze if you look at it wrong. I blame the recent global cooling.

Bob Ayers


Observing Reports Observing Sites GSSP 2010, July 10 - 14
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Adin, CA

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