After going in my garage to retrieve my telescope the sky suddenly became dark with clouds?

Question

who do I blame?

I really wanted to see Jupiters rings.

Answer 1

Tina took the words right out of my mouth.  I was thinking of suggesting a new scope as a cure for drought.  :-(

BTW

re. Jupiter:

Gallilean Moons - yes

Atmospheric banding - yes

Big Red Spot - yes

rings - no way.

Answer 2

My fault, I'm afraid. It's another instance of [surname]'s law, which states, "Whenever an astronomical event of interest is taking place, it will be cloudy above my observing location." There seems to have been some spillover into your site. I'm working to contain it. Try again next week.

Answer 3

You should blame yourself for thinking you could see Jupiter's moons. Even the most powerful telescopes cannot resolve its moons. The Voyager probes discovered them on their mission.

Answer 4

jupiter's rings? ok...

if you think this is bad, try buying a nice new telesscope and watch what the weather does. after i bought my last scope it rained for 6 months.

Answer 5

Blame yourself, for not watching the weather forecast?

Blame the weatherman, if you did watch it and "cloudy late" wasn't on the ticket.

Blame whatever weather god/spirit you may or may not believe in.

By the way, "Arcturus C" there goofed.  Galileo saw Jupiter's 4 biggest MOONS in a primitive telescope way back in the 17th century.  You can spot them in just about any $20 telescope.   I'm sure he meant to say RINGS.  Jupiter's RINGS are far too faint to be seen even in large earthbound telescopes.

You can see Saturn's if you're lucky.  Never Jupiter's.

Answer 6

Murphy's law.

The same rule that means whenever there is some particular satellite I want to observe (for example when the shuttle and space station were docking over our country some time ago) it will probably also cloud over or it will be misty.

If you do manage to see the rings and are set up to take photographs from your scope, I am sure the people in the second link would be interested in your photos- oops I just tempted Mr Murphy again!  :-)