Last night was reasonably clear so I decided to spend some time in the dome. It ended up being a lengthy session, lasting from about 9:00 p.m until 3:30 a.m. The sky seemed slightly murky, and today I learned that a fire near Sierra Vista may have introduced some gunk in the sky, but in general it was a decent night.
I mainly spent time imaging with the CCD. The objects included M27, the Dumbell Nebula, which is what's in the picture above. M27 is a planetary nebula and the central star is clearly seen (the bright blue star near the middle).
I've asked the SBIG e-mail reflector guys for some help in working with the data, because the colors are not quite right. So hopefully the version that I will eventually post to the Xanadu website will be somewhat improved. The more I use the CCD, the more I realize I don't know about it. Fortunately the astronomy community is very supportive and most knowledgeable amateurs will glady share their expertise.
I'm really tired tonight since I only got 3 hours of sleep last night. We ran a race this evening and somehow I stumbled through it even though it was much longer than it was supposed to be (I even got 2nd place in my age group), it's sort of our summertime tradition to run these Thursday night races that are put on by Parks & Rec. In fact the first summer series we ran was 21 years ago...the same year that Halley's Comet returned!
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