Thermal monocular issues (white out)

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I have a FLIR LSXR 640 core.

I hear people talking about humidity having an affect on thermal, but what affect does it have? On my unit, I have noticed that if I look to far up the horizon, it goes close to a complete whiteout on my screen. I would not think this is a humidity issue, but would like conformation.
 
This is something I call Sky-lining as you look to the Horizon. It even happens on the Bering Optics Phenom. Some background modes on the Phenom are more susceptible to this and Bering is working on this. You may try other background if your Flir has this option.

Humidity will wash out a lot of the additional features such as definition of the landscape, trees, etc. Typically smaller lens sizes and lower resolution thermals are more severely impacted but all thermals are impacted by humidity in some way but this is not what you are seeing when looking at the sky/horizon.
 
Your FLIR thermal is calibrated to detect heat. There is no measurable heat in the upper atmosphere so it does not detect anything, just a washed out display. Humidity has nothing to do with that.
 
Skylining is what's happening, thanks. This happens when I get 1/2ish of the FOV on the horizon. The only settings I have are brightness, and 6 color options.
 
That is right, do not aim your microbolometer into the sky where the temperatures are below -50 F. To avoid the problem of being at ambient temperature and looking at extreme cold.

Some microbolometers take their reference point from the center of the lens view, other from an area around the center, others from the upper center, others from the lower center, and others from the entire screen view.

In the case of the TAU2 microbolometer in the FLIR LSXR 640, it takes it from an area around the center, which is exactly why this is occurring to you.
 
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