60 more days until spring. Go back to the ocean La Nina!

Artwork by Royaba

It's again been about 3 weeks since the skies have been clear enough to do something outside.  Its been weeks of sitting in the house watching TV in the evenings while La Nina beats on the outside of the house.  Some snow, lot of wind, freezing rain, then just plain soggy rain.  Nina has also been sneaking into the backyard observatory through a small leak in the roof that I finally tracked down and not-so-successfully plugged.  Where is the leak?  Directly above the Meade telescope of course!  Not just that, but directly over the corrector plate.  I did notice it a while ago since there was a puddle on the mount (below the electronics too....ugh!), but things were still working so no damage done.  In addition to the normal bedsheet scope snuggie, I have the fancy end of the scope covered with a garbage bag, topped off with one of those blue Ikea bags on top.  Nothing wet now, but just another project to go after when thing dry out.
Brief clearing tonight but of course I look east an the very big, full, bright moon is just peeking up over the hill blasting the sky with light.  At least the Earth seems happy about seeing the moon!
(Thanks to Phil Plait for posting that photo on his site)  Funniest picture I've seen in a while.
Here is an unfinished image of the Rosette nebula taken the same night as my Orion M42 shot below.  I need to fix the colors a little more since it look kind of green, but a lot of people that saw this image said it was amazing looking.  I just processed this one fairly quickly and posted it, but I got some good comments on it.  Maybe it is good, but my worst critic is myself and I'm never quit satisfied.  That is what keeps me going outside in the cold thinking "maybe 10 more exposures will get me that good shot and the APOD?"