Jupiters detail and seeing conditions

I have been trying to duplicate some spectacular views I received of Jupiter on superbowl sunday 2001. I have yet to get close and have to admit that I am still a newbie and have spent much more time in contruction than observing but I want to recapture that night. I live in south central US and have decent dark skies. I have an 8 inch F6.25 and usually view at 195x or 267x. Does anyone know what the normal rating for seeing is in this area. How often do we get good and great seeing? How good does the seeing have to be to get alot of detail with Jupiter? I think I just got real lucky that night and my colimation was perfect. Think I need to work on that some more.

Thanks for any insight

Dave

check this site for clear sky conditions.

http://cleardarksky.com/csk/index.html#clock_list

David,

One other thing is to make sure your mirror is cooled down enough to give good images. Even if the seeing is excellent you won't see it if the mirror is giving off heat. You can judge seeing pretty accurately by centering a moderately bright star in the FOV of an eyepiece giving about 200x and defocusing the image. You should see some clear, concentric rings when slightly out focus if the seeing is very good. Atmospheric turbulence will be visible as waves in the rings. With practice you can also see the difference between atmospheric turbulence and heat from the mirror.

Doug Tanaka