Sometimes when turnouts to star parties are modest, I wonder whether skepticism about the weather keeps people home. Before the recent party at Brower, I posted, “Weather forecasts promise clear skies for this star party. The day’s earlier clouds and rain will move out to sea before nightfall.” That is exactly what happened! Weather forecasts and my interpretation of them can be wrong, but in this case as in others with similar forecasts, we had a fine night with the weather cooperating as promised. Meteoblue’s Multicast is amazingly trustworthy. When all fourteen forecasts for a location agree, it is remarkably accurate in predicting even seemingly unlikely events, such as thick clouds departing upon nightfall.
At Brower, the Trischiefspiegler showed large but not super-detailed views of Jupiter, because conditions were not optimal for so much magnification. Still, it was amazing to see how seventeen feet of effective focal length steadied the view despite bad seeing. Lenny brought his newly finished, and quite magnificent, truss tube Dob built to house the Mark Harry 10-inch mirror. It was the star of the night, just the right scope for conditions, with sharp, contrasty views! Up in the dome, we hunted galaxies in Markarian’s Chain.
While it is never possible to give absolute assurances about the weather, the best short-term multicasts are so good that I encourage people to join us for star parties when the forecasts converge on good weather.
