Automatically finding cloud "holes"?

Affiliation
American Association of Variable Star Observers (AAVSO)
Mon, 03/09/2015 - 21:44

Hello, I operate the BSM-Hamren in Hawaii. It is a good location by long/lat in sky coverage, but unfortunately I suffer from very cloudy skies most of the time. Yet, as typical of tropical areas ,the cloudiness tends to be highly variable, both in time, and in space. On the average, most nights can be considered unusable for photometry using a typical scheduler-like system which BSM uses (ACP).

On the other hand, I have much greater success visually, since I can take advantage of short clearings and/or "holes" in the clouds over a target area which I want to observe. So, I am wondering if there is any automated feature in ACP which would be able to function in a similar "agile" fashion. ACP has a "weather" function, but I believe it is made for closing a dome when moisture appears. Could this feature be enhanced to take the image from an all-sky camera, locate open areas of the sky in real-time, and modify the ACP schedule sequence, to observe the objects which happen to be in the clear?

If ACP software does not have this capability, is there any third-party software out there, which can perform this function, and integrate with ACP?

Thank you!

Mike LMK