Telescope Status and Weather
These pages show the weather conditions and status of a telescope at a particular moment in time. You can use them to check on the current weather at a telescope, or look back through the archive to see what it was like when your observation was taken.
There is quite a lot of information on the page, so
in the list below, we will take you through a page one part at a time.
Main Heading
Here you can see which telescope you are checking and the exact time that the data you are viewing was collected. (This may be slighly different from the requested time, but only by a minute or so).
There is also an information box which will tell you if the
telescope is Waiting for something, Moving to a new
object, In Position and pointing at an object or simply with
the enclosure Closed. The colour of the box may change to
highlight important states.
Weather Data
Weather information is shown in this section. This includes
temperature, humidity, pressure and the direction and speed of the
wind. There is also a box which will warn of wet or icy conditions and
a final one which keeps track of the position of the Sun and will tell
you if it is day, twilight or night at the telescope.
Again, the boxes can be colour coded to highlight important
information. If a box is Yellow it
means that the telescope needs to be careful how and what it
observes. If a box is Orange, then
the telescope cannot observe and will be closing or closed.
SimCam
Here you can see a simulated image showing what the telescope would look like if you could see it. It shows what direction it is pointing in and whether the enclosure is open or closed. The enclosure building has been made slightly transparent so that you can see the telescope inside - obviously it is not really like this!
Sometimes there is no information about exactly what the telescope
is doing (for example during the day when it is turned off) so this
image will say Status Unknown on it.
Sky Image
In the bottom right-hand corner, there is a picture of the sky
over the telescope. If there is a suitable image from a SkyCam, then this is shown. These are very
useful as they are an actual picture of the sky over the telescope and
will show things like cloud.
Sometimes there is no ConCam image available - for example the
cameras are turned off during the day. If this is the case, a simple
Sky Map will be shown instead.
Exploring the Weather Archive
If you want to look in more detail at the weather archive at the
telescope, you can search through entire days, weeks, months and years
in one go using the Weather Archive Data Selection tool.