Observing Night

We had an observing night tonight out at the planetarium.  Unfortunately the forecast was worse than predicted and there were a lot of clouds instead of clear skies.  However, after about an hour there were some openings in the clouds and we were able to see the planet Saturn, which is always stunning to see.  Bill, one of our members, is shown seated at his computer which is connected to a special planetary camera on his telescope, in the shadows in the lower right of the photo.  Other members are gathered around as he demonstrates how he captures more than one thousand images of the planet and then using software puts them all together and when he is done the image looks as if it was from the Hubble Space Telescope.  So it was a wonderful evening in the end, to see how Bill does his magic and produces beautiful photographs of the planets.