Cloudy skies returned on Sunday, 31 December 2017. So instead of an observing & astrophotography report you get my annual Year End Report.

Other than an Air Conditioner installation during the unusually hot summer of 2017, I made no significant upgrades to the observatory this year. Throughout 2017 I did purchase some equipment to help with my Total Solar Eclipse photography. Here is the complete list of product reviews I did in 2017:

iOptron SkyTracker Pro
Solar Eclipse Timer
Total Solar Eclipse book
Meade ETX-125 Observer
Photo Solar Eclipse
Kendrick Sun Finder
Manfrotto 410 Geared Head
Ziv Right Angle Viewfinder
Spectrum Solar Kit
Spectrum Camera Solar Filter
ScopeStuff DSLR finder

The following reviews were updated in 2017:

Vortex 12x50 Binoculars
NightCap Camera
AstroAid v3
ScopeBoss
GC Wi-Fi Adapter

As seen in the following table and graph, the number of observatory sessions and total session hours were down in 2017. That was a result of a lot of trips in 2017, including for the Total Solar Eclipse in August, as well as cloudy nights.

Of course, the main highlight of 2017 was the Total Solar Eclipse of 21 August 2017, which we viewed from Hopkinsville, Kentucky. The second best highlight of 2017 was the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launch from California as seen from here in Arizona. Another highlight of the year was being selected as a Meade Team Ambassador.

I took a total of 2294 photos during 2017. Here are some special ones:

Click or tap on image for larger version

See you in 2018!

---

Comments are welcome using Email. Twitter users can use the button below to tweet this report to their followers. Thanks.

Tweet

---

Previous report

Cassiopeia Observatory Home Page