A welcome tongue of dry air filtered in to CAV ahead of a less welcome soon-to-be Gulf visitor Hurricane Isaac in August, 2012. I decided to take advantage of this dry clear air despite the bright first quarter Moon and study something. Cygnus was overhead early so I hunted down planetary neb NGC 6826, the “Blinking Planetary”. I was surprised to find a big halo even in relatively short exposures. I guess many of these planetaries have halos and many appear to be quite blue. So using a H-alpha filter didn’t make sense but I wanted to subtract out the Moon. OIII doesn’t give much leverage against the moonlight. Above is a mosaic showing a short luminance exposure superimposed on a 4 hour H-alpha inverted background with halo. It will be fun to reshoot this halo during the dark of the Moon with OIII. Surely it will be brighter and more detailed. It got down to the upper 60s that night at CAV. Sure looking forward to this Fall with cooler, drier conditions. But first we had to negotiate Isaac and the squalls, wind and lightning it is likely to give CAV. It didn’t look like a direct hit but we were on the nastier side of this system that Tuesday. Hold on to your hats!