I was at the Golden State Star Party (GSSP) for five nights, and not only enjoyed five mostly clear nights but also the first light of the new spray silver coating on my 28-inch mirror.

The new coating performed exactly as I expected - wonderfully - and I was able to make some lifetime observations. I finally saw, unequivocally, color in the Ring Nebula. The new coating helped a great deal, but what made the observations so distinct was flashing my observing eye with white light for a couple of seconds before looking in the eyepiece.

I saw the main ring as an unsaturated but distinct green-blue turquoise with a thin orange perimeter. I couldn't tell if the interior of the ring had any color but I could see that along the interior major axis edges that the background was much darker than the rest of the interior. Pretty awesome really. Low power showed all this best.

I tried the same thing on the Dumbbell Nebula with much the same result - the bright parts of the Dumbbell had an unsaturated but distinct green-blue turquoise with a thin orange perimeter at the outer edges of the major axis of the nebula - it was exquisitely beautiful. And finally, the Lagoon Nebula finally had a definite red-ish hue.

Evidently, briefly flashing your observing eye with white light reactivates the color sensing cones in your eye after it's become dark adapted. I discovered that my right eye is slightly more sensitive to color, which is interesting because my left eye is more sensitive for seeing faint objects. Perhaps this helped me I gravitate toward observing the bright planets and the moon with my right eye years ago.