Tuesday, November 20, 2007

Weather forecasts for Stargazers

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Stargazing requires the cooperation of the weather. The weather channel is some help, but forecasts for astronomy are specialized. Fortunately there is a great resource, Clear Sky Clocks Charts, that can help take the guesswork out of the forecast.

Clear sky charts are forecasts for specific locations that are cleverly extracted from satellite photographs collected by Environment Canada for weather forecasting. The forecasts provide a lot useful information about observing quality beyond just cloud cover.

Below, I've included a few charts for Toronto and several Scout Camps we use:
Toronto
Woodland Trails
Blue Springs Camp
Camp Goodyear (WildFlower Obs.)
Haliburton Scout Reserve

Thanks to Attilla Danko and Allan Rahill (at CMC) for this resource. If you find it useful, please use the email links on the charts home page and let them know.

Update: The name Clear Sky Clocks was changed to Clear Sky Charts to avoid a trademark issue with a company called Sky Clocks.

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