Having fun at work

I really do have a great job-  I always tell folks that somehow I married a great hobby with a lot of administrative experience at the University...and now I get to worry about the budget and work with telescopes at the same time!  Two weeks ago we held two first ever events at the SkyCenter- a DSLR milky way and star trail workshop and a Messier Marathon.   Here is a single shot of the summit as the milky way was rising on March 25th-

While I had to work and did not 'participate' in either event, I did manage to squeeze off a few pictures of my own during the night- First, this is a single 20 second exposure of M 13, the Hercules globular cluster, taken through the 24" Phillips telescope using my Canon 6D.  I was impressed with the image out of the camera, so I decided to try and process it a little using Photoshop...and while I know the color of the stars is a little saturated, I still like the result.

In addition, I took a 30 second exposure of the M 57, the Ring Nebula in Lyra.  The image below is a 100% crop, and my colleague (and professional photographer) Sean Parker worked the processing a bit to bring out the galaxy (IC 1296) nearby the ring...but the ring itself is very much what the Canon delivered.

Final image from the weekend, is an exposure I took inside the dome of the 32" Schulman Telescope during a break in the Messier Marathon while guests were waiting for the summer constellations to rise a little higher.  It seems bright in the dome, but consider all the lighting is coming from red led lights that illuminate the steps leading into the dome!

Hey, 2 blog posts in two weeks!