Usually astronomers consider the period around full moon to be useless for observing. Fortunately I have learned that narrowband imaging is quite possible at any moon phase.
This is especially good news for this night, because we finally got a break in the monsoons and had a clear night. So right now I'm sitting in my friend Dean's back yard, next to his observatory. You can see our scopes set up with the observatory in the background. In fact look closely and you can see the bowl of the Big Dipper just above the building.
I've been taking H-Alpha, OIII, and SII filtered images of a portion of the Veil Nebula (NGC 6960) all evening. Total integration for the final image will be 4.5 hours, 1.5 for each filter. Dean's been imaging Sharpless 86 (NGC 6820). The transparency is really great tonight, so even though the moon is nearly full, the sky is reasonably dark - between 18.5 and 19.0 on the sky quality meter. The moon was right between Scorpius and the Teapot, but we could easily see all the stars in both.
Hopefully I will complete processing on some of the data I've been gathering in the last month soon, should be some decent pictures coming...
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