Astronomical Seeing and Transparency

The CMC Astronomical Seeing and Transparency forecasts are now available in the beta weather site for PRO users.

White (0) is worst, dark blue (5) is best!


These are the same forecasts you see on sites such as ClearDarkSky.com.

In the New Year, we’ll add a composite “Observing” forecast that combines things like transparency, seeing, smoke and wind gusts into a single forecast product for at-a-glance assessment of conditions.

If you have any thoughts on exactly how that should work, please shout - I’d value your input!

Super!!

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Thank you for adding this. This is a WONDERFUL value-add.

Now, from a single place, I can see a detailed weather forecast AND a seeing forecast. I used it this morning, in fact, to help decide if I should go out. (In the end, the value was a 3, which is decidedly not helpful, LOL. But I DID use it!)

Maybe Observing can be the same as seeing–a simple number/color? If we want to see what makes up that, we dig into the wind, smoke, seeing and clouds.

Also, food for thought. What about Observing with and without smoke? Sometimes, the smoke forecast is completely off base, and sometimes, it is spot-on. Having an option to include or it not might help make a more informed decision. Or it might complicate the UI/UX, too.

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Hi @david - thanks for the feedback!

In principle, we could have multiple variants of the observing forecast, e.g. with/without smoke as you suggest.

I’m thinking also about how best to represent conditions with respect to colors - it would be relatively easy, for example, to have a two-color approach where if both seeing and transparency are ‘5’, then you get some target ‘excellent conditons’ color, but it remains possible to distinguish where seeing is great, but transparency is poor, for example.

Unfortunately the Clear Dark Sky convention where dark blue is ‘5’ limits the options rather:

The closer the target color is to a neutral shade (e.g. white or grey) the more complementary the input colors can be:

I’d almost be tempted to flip the clear dark sky convention on its head and show excellent conditions as transparent (which can be white with zero opacity), and then use complementary solid colors for seeing and transparency, e.g.:

It requires the user to learn to read the new colors though.

I’m also thinking that we filter the weather layers by photographic use case - if you select Astrophotography, then we can show only the layers directly relevant to that - that could address the UI/UX complexity, perhaps.

I like the idea of use cases, such as astrophotography, which then filter the layers. Pick what you are attempting, and then you can select the options (layers) relevant to what you are up to.

Not sure what to think about the colors.