Cooling again

[wingeing Pom]

Got a question for all you guys who unlike me live in hot climes.
I've just got back from a trip to Arizona - ridiculously hot all the time, didn't drop below 111 F during the day (real units!) and hit 118 F one day. Got to thinking, although the sky was nice and dark, what about all the heat haze in the evening - is this a problem with whatever surface (tarmac, brickwork, outback rock) surrounds your scope giving off heat through the night? Other thing I thought was that the peltier cooler on the CCD would be lucky to get it down to room temp - do you guys have this as a problem too?

Greg

[Radar]

Hi Greg,

In sweltering heat, I think astrophotography is a problem around concrete objects such as buildings etc. Even tin roofs can cause a problem. It's not so noticable though with wide and deep field, but I imagine with planetary it'd be a huge headache.

Ray

[wingeing Pom]

Thanks Ray,

I thought this had to be a problem, and even with widefield/deep-sky it will depend on the arcseconds per pixel you are working at.

Similarly, unless you have additional water-cooling to help the poor little Peltier in your CCD, I can see noise problems there too (I think we even see this is the U.K. between summer and winter imaging).

Greg