| | 15 | 6. What if it's cloudy, the seeing is poor, or I don't have objects to observe all night long? It's a good idea when making your observing program to account for all these things. If your project is dependent on sub-arcsecond seeing, it's best to have a back-up program in case the conditions are poor. Likewise, there are some projects (like differential photometry) where intermittent cloudiness isn't as big of a deal as for other projects (such as flux-calibrated spectra or absolute photometry). If what you want to observe doesn't rise until halfway through the night, try to come up with some earlier targets yourself or ask some of the veteran observers if there are objects they'd like to get data on. Almost every observer in the department has a bucket list waiting for such scenarios and some (namely Joe Patterson) have observing programs which can be done in very poor conditions. |
