Which Season Is Ussualy Best For Astrophotography? Any Thaughts?

For at least Oklahoma and New Mexico I would pick fall and early winter as the best time. Lots of clear, steady, transparent and long nights. Summer nights are too short and too hot, even with cooled cameras. When nights are in the 90's it's a struggle to cool the chip to 0 and you can forget about uncooled cameras. Add mosquitoes and it's pretty unpleasant.

Summer gave me the most memorable sky quality; I took my Clamshell data during Summer, it was very sharp; seeing was extremely good and consistent across many nights

for the mosquitoes, I use a Flowtron bug zapper, it works really well

Tony Gondola:
For at least Oklahoma and New Mexico I would pick fall and early winter as the best time. Lots of clear, steady, transparent and long nights. Summer nights are too short and too hot, even with cooled cameras. When nights are in the 90's it's a struggle to cool the chip to 0 and you can forget about uncooled cameras. Add mosquitoes and it's pretty unpleasant.

Late summer has some of the worst transparency, and agreed, summers are impossibly hot, my camera barely dips below -5C during the summers, but the seeing in E OK is phenomenal, I've seen it as low as 0.9"!

I consider several things related to seasons which include targets available, others have mentioned "galaxy" (Fall, Winter, Spring) season and "nebula season" (Spring, Summer, Fall).

But I also prefer "colder temperatures" as the equipment performs better, especially the ability to cool your camera sensor so for that I really like Fall and Winter, as I can easily cool my camera from  -10 C to -20 C. I am lucky if I can get the sensor to O C in the Summer, and images definitely are more noisy. Fall, Winter evenings are clearer with better transparency and seeing - Summer has a lot of atmospheric turbulence.

Then there is the "longer" vs "shorter" nights (astronomical darkness) - especially for those at more northern latitudes, I can only may squeeze 6 hrs in the Summer - were during the winter I can easily get 10 - it makes a difference.

I leave you with the following advice - plan your targets - know when they transit and plan for their transit to be around the middle of your evening (from end of astronomical twilight to start of astronomical twilight)

Cheers

Technically winter because the nights are long and the targets are most interesting, but 99% of the nights are clouded so it's like the universe's sick twisted humor.

Scott Badger:
The cruelest nights for me are during the winter when seeing is worst and most variable…..crystal clear night, dead calm, and seeing at 6”+…… Of course you don’t know what it is until you get up at 2am, layer up for 10F, and go out and try to image……

Cheers,
Scott

Story of my life 3 weeks now, sky looks perfect and after I setup seeing is so bad even the 350mm frak shows fuzzy hairballs, let alone the 1500mm mak...

V:

Tony Gondola:

V:

Tony Gondola:
For at least Oklahoma and New Mexico I would pick fall and early winter as the best time. Lots of clear, steady, transparent and long nights. Summer nights are too short and too hot, even with cooled cameras. When nights are in the 90's it's a struggle to cool the chip to 0 and you can forget about uncooled cameras. Add mosquitoes and it's pretty unpleasant.

Late summer has some of the worst transparency, and agreed, summers are impossibly hot, my camera barely dips below -5C during the summers, but the seeing in E OK is phenomenal, I've seen it as low as 0.9"!

I'm in Tulsa and have also seen some very steady nights here in early January this year. In terms of seeing, conditions have been much better than I was used to in New Mexico.

Tulsa, wow you're even closer than I thought! I think this time of year, from January to mid march has the worst seeing, the range of seeing this time of year that I've seen is anywhere from 1.9-2.4", versus 1.1-1.7" in the summers into fall. Thats not to say that these months dont have their good or bad days. Worst I've ever seen here I can't give a number for, as the stars even in focus wouldnt register. Pure blur. That was right before a big storm moved in, and since then I've moved on to only shooting after storms, I've never had a bad night doing that.

I think that kind of timing is a pretty good bet!