Finally back into the night

Its been a few months of clouds and rain and so I havent gotten to get out to observe or image in quite some time. My local astronomy group (San Antonio Astronomical Association) had an outreach outing at Garner State Park this past weekend and the forecast was iffy, but had the possibility to be nice so I packed all my gear and drove out for it. We were treated to a gorgeous night free of clouds until around 245 in the morning. Each scope had lines of people, adults and kids alike, excited to see planets, globular clusters, nebulas - basically whatever we would show them. It was a great time.

About 11 pm the crowds left and I was able to start imaging. I had already selected the Trifid Nebula so retweaked my alignment since it had gotten bumped with all the people around the scope and began imaging. I got a good amount of Luminance, Red & Green data. I had just started the Blue channel when the sky got completely socked in. Once I got home the next day I ran through my normal processing except I had to take the two blue frames I got before the clouds and some tweaking with the Green channel to create a false blue to see what I had ... despite the false blue channel, I am happy with the result.

I do plan to get out and get some proper blue sometime soon, but for my first chance at imaging since April, it made me happy to be back out with the scope.