Sad but true, and this weekend will fall into that category. On the other hand, some of the best, clearest, most transparent skies I have ever seen around here are in springtime, one or two days after a storm front blows through. If you time it right, spring can offer the best seeing. But probably not this weekend. The good news is that all you need to do in a Messier Marathon is simply ID a lot of old familiar targets, even if the view is sub-par. On Tue, Mar 20, 2012 at 1:07 PM, daniel turner <outwest112@yahoo.com> wrote:
The sad truth about our springtime skies is that there is a lot of cirrus haze at high altitude. This makes it hard to impossible to pick out the faint fuzzies like galaxies in the Virgo cluster. The weather forcasters don't seem to notice this and will list the conditions as "mostly clear" even though it's still bad news for deep space observing. It's thin enough for the UV index to rise and you can get a sunburn through it. But for observing it's only fit for planets and the moon, like at an urban star party. That's why the the Transparency line on the CSC lists conditions as "below average".