Chuck said,

Do you think that the U data set could be useful for a broad characterization of the valley-at-large?

No, especially since to point it at Polaris, the box is sighted over the south end of Black Mtn. But again, some data is better than no data at all. -:)

How much are those monitors? One at SPOC might provide interesting data.

The list price was around $2500. My guess is that club members are satisfied with eye-balling seeing and their experience. Borrowing or renting it from the U or asking that they undertake a "special ancillary study" at SPOC once they are done at Boulder Mtn. would be another idea. A potential problem mounting a seeing box at SPOC is security. The Physics Building is a secure facility. An exterior box at SPOC would be at higher risk for theft. If such an idea were to be pursued, another lower cost idea might be to have a post mounted objective that projects into the control room, or a viewport coming out of the side of the control room. That would keep the camera securely inside the building. A donated pc and a cheap camera could function as a recorder. Such a set up would also be useful for site ZLM characterization and light pollution documentation, if the objective can be rotated straight-up or a flip-mirror used for zenith or polar orientation. Another useful seeing test that you can do to support your astrophotography are seeing estimates by length of exposure. Basically, you take a series of photos of a bright star for 10, 15, 30, 60, 90 and 120 secs and then measure the FWHM of the star. That gives you an idea of how much distortion you get at a site for a given exposure length. Haven't done one myself, but here's a pro article that illustrates it: http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?bibcode=1989PASP..101..436R - Kurt _______________________________________________ Sent via CSolutions - http://www.csolutions.net