Wednesday, 15 July 2020, dawned cloudy with cloudy nights forecast for awhile. There were some thunderstorms in the area late afternoon, but no rain here. The area of the Bighorn Fire on Mt Lemmon did receive some rain. Thursday, 16 July, was also cloudy with thunderstorms in the area (0.02" rain here). Shortly before sunset there was a nice double rainbow (photographed with an iPhone 11 Pro Max, 0.5X lens).

Click or tap on image for larger version

Cloudy nights prevented any sightings of Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE, including nights with flybys of the International Space Station (ISS), which would have made for neat photos.

The sky was partly cloudy 90 minutes before sunset on Monday, 20 July, so I decided to open the observatory with the hope of being able to do some observing before the next extended period of cloudy skies returned.

As of 17 July (the latest report) the Bighorn Fire had burned 119,741 acres and was still 90% contained.

Open: Monday, 20 July 2020, 1817 MST Temperature: 105°F

Session: 1501 Conditions: Partly cloudy

After opening the dome I installed some new electrical items in the observatory. I replaced the surge protector that had been in the observatory since 2009 with a new model that included USB ports to power my 13 year old iPod whose battery was getting old. I also installed a shorter electrical cord for the air conditioner.

1846 MST: the clouds were increasing.

1853 MST: I relaxed on the observatory patio bench while monitoring the clouds.

1914 MST: the sky did not look as promising as it had been an hour before, as seen in this iPhone 11 Pro Max photo (0.5X lens).

1924 MST: pretty sunset but the sky was not going to be good for observing anything, including Comet C/2020 F3 NEOWISE. iPhone 11 Pro Max photo (0.5X lens).

1932 MST: sunset.

As the sky was now mostly cloudy I decided to give up.

Close: Monday, 20 July 2020, 1947 MST Temperature: 88°F

Session Length: 1h 30m Conditions: Mostly cloudy

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