Posted by Gary Poyner at 13:44 on 2012 Jan 01
To continue Jeremy’s thread, here are my observing stats for North Birmingham 2011…A partially clear night is 50% or more cloud, and clear night is 50% or less. Useable gaps in cloud are counted as partialy clear. Clear 51 (2010 – 50)P/Clear 37 (2010 – 32)Of these 88 nights, 6 had some Moonlight interference and 33 had heavy Moonlight interference. I observed on 78 nights as 10 nights were missed due to holidays or giving talks to astro societies. Best month May with 12 nights. Worst month July with 4 nights.8,715 variable star observations were made visually, with 850 CCD obs obtained using robotic telescopes. Not counting 2010, when I was without a main telescope for 6 months, this was my poorest return since 2002. The quality of sky continues to worsen, and I cant explain it. The light pollution seems no worse than previous years, indeed LED streetlights are going up all over the place here and they are excellent, but transparent nights here get rarer and rarer. I saw the Milky Way three times in 2011 from home, and they were just vague sightings easily missed if you didnt look for it. Observing faint stars just gets tougher, despite having a big scope (although I did break the mag 17 barrier visually this year on a rare night with a Polar airstream).I hope other observers post their 2011 results here. It makes for an interesting read!Happy New year!Gary