A run of unusually poor weather has prevented the Liverpool Telescope from capturing routine observations for the past three and a half weeks. On the odd occasion that the telescope dome has opened, the cloud cover and seeing were so poor that we were not able to get decent images.

As the following graph shows, the main problem has been the high humidity, which can cause major problems with a telescope's optical and electronic systems if they are exposed to too much moisture. As a result, the telescope dome has remained closed for much of the past month.

In addition to the humidity, high winds, snow, rain and ice have all combined to make the past four weeks one of the worst patches on record. You can get more information about the recent poor weather at the Liverpool Telescope, by going to the following link:

View the LT Weather Archive

The dreadful weather has obviously resulted in a significant backlog of school requests. However, when the weather does improve, which it will, this backlog should clear within a day or two. If you need observations in the meantime, however, please don't forget that you can access the NSO Archive, which contains many thousands of images taken over the past five and a half years. You will need a username and password, but you can find the archive at the following link:

View NSO Archive

Alternatively, you can download images that have been selected as the Image of the Month, by going to the following link:

View Image of the Month

Hopefully this update will have given you a little background as to why we haven't seen any observations for so long. We understand that the poor run of weather has been very frustrating and we thank you all for your patience.