Friday, November 15, 2024

Observation Aid: SkyViewAltAz - Update #3

 When planning observation runs there is - unfortunately - a further factor that needs to be taken into account besides the visibility of targets through the various partial sky views available on the home block. That further factor is - of course - a clear sky.

While the application works well at its purpose of showing possible targets for the night, the presence of a clear sky was not included - which required looking up various websites.

The online website 'Clear Outside' provides a graphic which gives a forecast for the next couple of days in terms of skies suitable for observations. This graphic has been added to the 'SkyViewAltAz' application. Some re-arrangement of the GUI was also done to fit the graphic in.


Conveniently the 'Clear Outside' graphic is updated every hour and provides a prediction of cloud cover in general area of the home observatory.