Is shooting through whispy clouds worth it?

My rule is that with hazy skies it ain't worth it, especially now with no astronomical night. You still get data I gather but a lot of effort with little return. If the seeing is also crap just give up.

The problem is even thin clouds are not uniform. They are filaments that move. Not really that much different from fat, clearly defined clouds in terms of the patterns drawn on the image, except they are e.g. 5% white instead of 100% white so they do not kill the subject completely, it is true that some of it gets captured.

Generally they are not worth it, except in marginal cases: let's say your composition has very low SNR at the lower left corner because your camera was moved between night 1 (20 subs) and night 2 (200 subs). So the lower left corner stands out (more grainy, different background) despite the integration's best efforts to normalize things.

If the weather won't help you and the target is going away, it is probably okay to take another 100 subs through the mild clouds, do some serious background removal to the result and then take just the part corresponding to your low SNR corner and stitch it to the main composition. 

But the high SNR part of the composition no, it won't benefit from integrating extra cloudy data there. The cloudy data will either be rejected (if it is too few subs) or actively worsen your result.

Every now and then I talk myself into imaging during high/thin clouds, and the next day I always regret it.  Guiding is bad, data is bad, and I could've spent time doing something else (like sleeping).  At this point unless I'm 95% sure it's worth setting up to image, I don't.  This Spring was rough for me as well…2 straight months of clouds and basically missed out on Galaxy Season.  This is definitely a hobby of patience.

Because I only have a couple of hours viewing/imaging angle between the trees to the east and neighbor's house to the west, all of my targets require multi-night integrations. Definitely not worth polluting my good data with cloudy data. Will worsen the final result every time. I'd much rather sleep and get good data the next clear night.

I tried this last year on two nights, the subs didn’t look too bad but cameras these days are very sensitive ☺️ When it came to processing it was a waste of time so I’ve learnt my lesson, don’t bother unless the high cloud is intermittent.

Hi all,
my experience is a bit different. I even shoot with thin high clouds. But it depends on the target an whether I want to take Lum or RGB. For RGB I can take some clouds without problem. But in these case I do not guide, since guiding makes things worse when seeing is bad. 

Here an example from M82, where almost frame where shot through clouds. https://www.astrobin.com/3cxvjp/
On revision B you even can see the clouds passing by on the surveillance camera.

So my conclusion is: it depends! Filter, target and reserves have to be taken into consideration. But there is no doubt that quality degrades and there will be Bus more subs to dump. But as the OP pointed out: there are very few really clear nights. In my location at max ten a year. So the decision not to shoot if there a faint clouds is an academic question for me. I have little to no choice - i have to take what I get. 

Rüdiger

If you can leave the telescope alone outside, collecting photons without control, it can definitely be worth the effort.
Drifting clouds and haze can be sorted out, but for sure,  disappointments are queuing up, especially during the darkest and longest winter nights.
One night last winter I did just  that, and of 150 subs I got 9 good ones🥲, but a subframe is a subframe🕺.
Usually I get from 60 to 120 good subs.