Great Weather Fluctuations - Grab the Moon Before it's Too Late!
If you see one clear hour, you'd better grab it! Singularity Observatory - in the Spring and Fall, there are subtle short term fluctuations in weather patterns that could easily go unnoticed.
The short term weather changes, with a clear sky for example, hold extreme value to the Observatory. The idea is to be ready and alert, and harness these changes by understanding the patterns and having preparedness to jump into action at a moment's notice.
In this Pacific Ocean region, there is great weather stability, so over the long term an overcast Monsoon fog day will be multiplied by many days. Day after day after day, it looks exactly like the same repeating weather. However, to the watchful eye, there are very short changes, such as an hour here, 20 minutes there, when the sky occasional breaks from its very consistent weather pattern.
Likewise a Summer clear day follows the same pattern of repeating longevity However there are occasional and intermittent very short term disruptions to these weather patterns that are very short lived. Disruptions can be good. Last night was a great opportunity, after months of Monsoon, to view the effects of a short lived disruption.
The entire day was overcast, fog, smog, rain. Suddenly in the evening hour, the sky became clear, the Moon appeared, and an hour later the clear sky had vanished just as fast as it appeared. Then for days, it will go back to the same weather pattern - overcast, fog, smog, rain. For the moment of that one golden treasurable hour, astronomical viewing was fantastic. Grab it and run with it. You've gotta do it, otherwise all astronomical observational programs during the Monsoon period will be on hold.
In regards to a telescope, an astronomer must be a detective sleuth ready at a moments notice to spring into action to capture these clear night hours here and there to conduct research and effective observational programs. There are no known studies of these holes in long term weather patterns. However, Humanoido at Singularity Observatory has utilized the holes or cracks in clouds for quick astronomical telescopic observing (see blogs). Shooting telescopically through these openings can be greatly rewarding because the short term data gains can be summed with other data.
Let's say the goal is to image M57, the Ring Nebula. You could expose the plate for an hour, stop, wait for another hour three days later, expose another hour, and by the end of the month, sum all the images into one equivocally large time exposure.
The Gibbous Moon image illustrates the type of lunar soil color study typically conducted through a one hour errant in the atmosphere. In knowing the spectral responses of the electronic detector and utilizing advanced imaging analysis software, the soil content is spectroscopically analyzed and determined.
