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Late in the summer, I had the chance to finally make good on a discussion that had occurred over months with some extended family members ,who were aware of my astrophotogrphy work, about getting together for a family sky-viewing event. So I drove up to the northern end of LA county, just before the San Gabriel Mountains, still well within the light pollution dome of the LA metropolis (livin’ the Bortle X dream!). As I first viewed Saturn through the eyepiece, I quickly realized all of my nights under the sky, for at least the last 8 months or so, had been pure imaging (then post processing) through a computer - never looking through an eyepiece. The family, and a long-time neighbor, set up chairs around the telescope. We took turns looking at various targets - Jupiter and Saturn being the most interesting in detail, but the faint warbling teal of Neptune was awesome in its own way. Even the faint smooth fuzzball of The Ring Nebula, and the grainy fuzzball of the Hercules globular cluster, were easily visible. It was really just a great time surrounded by great people. It was also great to see through REAL optics, and for a moment, not the digital screen I’d been viewing the heavens through for the last 8 months. It did occur to me that this is probably a good metaphor for our digital life in the 21st century - occasionally we need to shut the screen down, and stare through clear optics to stay grounded in the at the real world. Some of the most fun for me were the great questions asked by various family members throughout the night - many for which I didn’t have the answer to, and would have to Google, and others just open ended questions that really make you think. It is that same inherent curiosity embedded in those questions that fuels my interest in the heavens (and STEM in general), and I couldn’t help but think that some of that curiosity was passed down through generations of family chats like this. Another takeaway from this session (or maybe more of a reminder) - note to self....make sure that curiosity about the world is a staple of family conversations at the dinner table and around the campfire. The most astronomically seasoned of my family members there, a great uncle in his 90s, who still has more energy and zeal than the rest of us, was one of the most enthusiastic. I am humbled by his stories of grinding and polishing his own primary mirror, somewhere around the 60s, for a home built telescope - the several-feet-deep cement cast pylon still in the center of his backyard. But, I'm happy with my purchased Celestron 8"......off the shelf. In this blog entry, for now I’ll skip over the late summer challenges of my 15 hours imaging the Andromeda Galaxy (M31) - the results of which were stifled by an enigmatic and latent source of calibration noise, which turned out to be dew on the imaging sensor, buried deep in my imaging train. Turns out this was also the source of noise that stymied a print-quality result on the Whirlpool Galaxy early in the summer (refer to blog entry below). Maybe I'll salvage some imagery and post later. A special thanks to my aunt once removed for this great image from that night. But, I'll include a test image of M27 - the Dumbell Nebula - a planetary nebula whose white dwarf is only 6% that of the sun's radius. Despite it only being about 10 exposures, and no flats, I thought the beauty was worth sharing (will get that target better next year). Taken with L-Enhance filter on my 8" Schmidt Cassegrain in Redondo Beach,CA.