AAVSOnet weather report

Technology
1

I’m looking into the daily weather report from AAVSOnet telescopes because I want to understand why no images were taken on a certain night. Was it cloudy? Raining? Windy? Was the roof open or not?

image

I’m looking at the data file of BSM_NM:

  • Is the “Date” column in UTC or local time?
  • What are the main flags to check (and the possible values)? I think these three are key: [CloudFlag, WindFlag, RainFlag2, RoofFlag, AlertFlag]. Am I correct?

image

Also, I’ve been searching the internet. Could this be the description of every column? Weather data file

Could you confirm if the link describes all columns, and advise which flag best indicates the reason for missing images?

Thanks for your help!
Joaquín

2

Joaquin,
Yes, that link has information on the Boltwood weather output file. This link has more information:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://diffractionlimited.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Cloud-SensorII-Users-Manual.pdf&ved=2ahUKEwjP2sbl0NqUAxVxk2oFHYIOKTcQFnoECB8QAQ&usg=AOvVaw2YWnd5yH-ucSQUhETlbQsf

I believe the date column is the local date at sunset. The official definition is probably a little different from that but that’s the easy way to think of it.

-Walt

1 Like
3

Walt, thank you for the information!