Cloud Permitting
A personal observing log for a small smart telescope. What was seen, when, and what the cloud allowed.
Context
I observe from a garden in Southport, at 53.7°N under Bortle 5 skies, with a DWARF mini. The images mounted up quickly; the record around them did not. What the conditions were, what I had been trying for, which target I meant to go back to: none of that survives in a folder of files.
A folder of images is not a log.
What I built
Cloud Permitting is that log. Each observation holds its object, its date and the images or video from the session, and the whole run can be read straight through or grouped by month, so a good spell reads as one.
It also looks forward. A seven-night forecast for Southport sits above the log, drawn from Open-Meteo, giving the cloud cover for each night and a plain verdict on whether it is worth setting up. The verdict is usually “Poor”. That is the honest reading in this part of the country, and it is where the site takes its name.
There is a Plan section for what to attempt next, and a login, which is mine. The log itself needs no account to read.
What it shows
Galaxies: Andromeda, the Whirlpool, Bode’s. The Hercules globular cluster and the Beehive. The Heart Nebula and the North America Nebula. The Moon at several phases, the Sun, and a partial solar eclipse followed in sequence until it set through cloud over Southport.
Role
Designer and developer. The observations and the images are my own.
Outcome
A small Node application, public to read. It gives each image somewhere to sit alongside the conditions that produced it, which is the part the camera never records.