Another night at the Clay

There are summer classes at Harvard that occasionally need to use the Clay Telescope located on campus. Normally the telescope operator or the class instructor is able to run the telescope, but sometimes, "observers on call" (aka some of the grad students here) are summoned when there is more help needed. 

I took the chance to help out for two nights in a row for some of the summer classes, which primarily consist of high school students. I'm particularly grateful for these observing opportunities because most of the past 4 months have been rainy and cloudy and generally just bad for observing. The past two nights were very clear and that resulted in some great images of Jupiter, Saturn, the moon, and the Hercules Cluster:

The Hercules Cluster and Saturn are shown in RGB color images while the moon is shown in ultraviolet light (remembering that the moon is reflected sunlight, which isn't as bright in UV light, minimizing saturation of the camera).

After so many cloudy nights, I'd say my yearning for some good telescope time has been satisfied. 

This is the moon as seen through the 40mm eyepiece.

:^)