Post by Paulie pchris00 on Nov 30, 2011 19:13:36 GMT -6
Over the past couple of years, I've noticed that no matter where I am in this area, and no matter how clear the day/evening/night, or time of year, the western sky seems to cloud up around sunset. I was thinking about this for the last week, and how that could effect our transit observations, and wondered if I was imagining all those cloudy sunsets. I started looking through pictures of every observation session that I snapped shots of the sunset, and with only a few exceptions so far, I was right.
Scientifically and meteorologically it proves nothing, but is something to consider. I have a wealth of evidence to support this hypothesis, too much to go through and post right now, but if anybody wants my documentation to show that I not just throwing out an "internet statistic," I'll do the work, and get it posted. I have evidence from Valpo, Chicago, and Conway (and possibly other locations; haven't gone through everything yet). For now, I submit this picture from today.
How concerned should we be that the last hour the Sun is up for the transit might be clouded out in an otherwise clear sky? It's not a critical time like the ingress contacts, but I don't want to lose a minute of observing time to the cloud demons.
Scientifically and meteorologically it proves nothing, but is something to consider. I have a wealth of evidence to support this hypothesis, too much to go through and post right now, but if anybody wants my documentation to show that I not just throwing out an "internet statistic," I'll do the work, and get it posted. I have evidence from Valpo, Chicago, and Conway (and possibly other locations; haven't gone through everything yet). For now, I submit this picture from today.
How concerned should we be that the last hour the Sun is up for the transit might be clouded out in an otherwise clear sky? It's not a critical time like the ingress contacts, but I don't want to lose a minute of observing time to the cloud demons.
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