foggy viewing (Blue Mountains)

I think Manuel was desperate.

They had come all the way. All the planning they had made. Time from work. And he had convinced Ida to join him. He wanted to put on a good show. So, when he stepped outside after our evening movie (inside the house, this time), and said that it was "clear," I felt a mix of emotions. I knew the conditions were really not that good (with the intense fog early in the evening) so there wasn't much point to trying to observe, but I felt that we needed to make that effort, for our guests. We should at least try.

We booted up the Geoff Brown Observatory. In short order, we had the roof open, the Paramount running, and eyepieces in the Celestron and Tele Vue 'scopes.

The comet proved very hard to see.

M13 was pretty faint.

We did see Jupiter sporting 4 moons.

But it was pretty socked in. It felt like we were in a bowl! Nothing was visible below 40° altitude.

The humidity value was 100%. Distant lightning.

It was too bad. Manuel had high hopes and I think wanted to impress Ida. We wanted to put on a good show. But it was grim.

We gave it a shot.

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I was thinking about Manuel's remarks on observing, on the conditions, how things looked through the eyepiece. Was he being optimistic? Hopeful? Thinking wishfully? It occurred to me later that it might be lack of experience? Perhaps he doesn't have a lot to compare with. The skies tonight were not unlike the light-polluted views from the city.

Manuel's maybe not experienced a truly dark sky at the CAO (although he was up before, but then, struggling with dew). He doesn't know how dark it can get... So the misty views tonight seemed "normal" to him. When Phil and I found this substandard, poor, almost not worth bothering.

It will be very good when he gets a truly dark moonless night up here...

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Manuel also kept talking about the air, having a lot of electricity, being ionised. I've never heard before that ionised air can affect seeing.