Photo opportunities

One of the benefits of working at the Mount Lemmon SkyCenter, is the opportunity to see many things that one would not normally witness down in the city, or even at lower elevations.  Yesterday I was at the Mount Lemmon summit all day and took a few pictures of some of the sights-  I'll present them here in chronological order.  First up is a picture of what I believe is a Blackhawk helicopter that made several passes and landings at our site during the early afternoon.  We have a helipad on site (think wildfire fighting, mountain rescue, etc) and it is likely that the pilot and crew thought our mountaintop site would make for a nice training location.

As the Sun was beginning to head toward the horizon, I took the image below looking east toward the Large Binocular Telescope (LBT).  While at least a 4 hour drive from the summit of Mount Lemmon, it is likely only 75-80 miles away as the crow flies. In addition to revealing beautiful colors on the intervening landscape, the low angle of the Sun illuminated the dome nicely and you can see it as the little white rectangle at the center of the image.

This is a full resolution crop of the center, and you can make out the slit in the center which opens to reveal the telescope.

Finally, we are often treated to fantastic sunsets and last night was no exception.  Quite often we can see the green rim of the Sun and I am always trying to take a picture of it.  I managed to capture one of my better ones last night, mostly due to the fact that it was one of the strongest I have seen in some time.  While viewing this phenomenon typically requires some magnification, last nights green rim was exceptionally vivid.