We finally had clears skies at the observatory tonight. Too bad it was a full moon. Six visitors tonight: three students from class, three guests of one of the students. We looked at M42, Saturn and the Moon. Seeing was exceptionally good. I tried taking a long exposure of the Flame Nebula, but I'm not sure it turned out as well as I had hoped.




The bright overexposed star on the left is the leftmost star of Orion's belt. The Flame Nebula is the dark nebula on the lower right of the photo. Processing in the GIMP did not seem to help. This was a 35 second exposure. I accidentally closed the 160 second exposure without saving.