Monday, 28 December 2015, dawned clear, but clouds began coming in from the west mid-morning with the sky becoming mostly overcast by mid-afternoon. Tuesday, 29 December, started out cloudy but began clearing late afternoon. That evening I and two other members of the Oracle Dark Skies Committee (ODSC) provided telescope viewing (using my ETX-105PE) along with materials on light pollution at a local guest ranch. The report of the event is on the ODSC History page. This was the first star party where I used my Baader Zoom 8-24mm Eyepiece and it was very useful to be able to change the magnification without needing to waste time swapping eyepieces.

After the star party I went to Oracle State Park and did some Sky Quality Measurements. I then stopped by a local business to photograph their outdoor lighting. By the time I got home I was too tired to open the observatory. However, I did take this photo of the eastern sky showing some of the Winter Milky Way left of the constellation of Orion, f/3.5, 30 seconds, ISO 1600, FL 18mm, cropped somewhat from the full-frame image:

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As I have been reporting throughout 2015, this has been the 10th anniversary year of my initial visits to "Oracle Observatory". My final visit in 2005 was on 28 December and here is that report.

I recently posted my review of the iOS app SkySafari 5 Pro. The basic version of SkySafari 5 was just released and is FREE through New Years Day 2016!

Springer Publishing has made available online all its astronomy books published prior to 10 years ago. My "Using the Meade ETX" book, published in 2002, is now available online for free. Also available is "Astronomy with Small Telescopes" by Stephen F. Tonkin; I have a chapter in that book.

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