2025 Wrapped

[Akarsh Simha]

I thought we'd have one more opening in the weather before the moon became untenable, but apparently not. Tonight was perhaps the last night, so I thought I'll start this thread to gather and share our best observing memories of 2025. Even if we do get a window, one can always update the thread. So, here goes:

What were your favorite moments in the process of observing from 2025?

Could be a great view, a core planetary or deep-sky memory, or could be a great experience -- maybe the pizza at Calstar, or even a terrifying experience -- like Wagner's recent Mountain Lion encounter. I'll post mine in the coming weeks, it's been a busy time.

Regards

Akarsh

[Paul Alsing]

In a nutshell, Debbie and I observed for 5 nights in October with Jimi Lowrey on Barbarella, his 48" Dob, and this was clearly the highlight of our observing year. It did not hurt that the very exuberant young Scott Harrington joined us, bringing with him a long list of obscure objects to broaden all of our horizons!

[mccart...@yahoo.com]

As I read through my logs I found only 31 nights of observations (both home and at dark sites), which is a surprise as I usually have >70.  A lot of comments about long stretches of poor weather / cloudiness, so I guess that is an excuse.

One particular observation stands out: Procyon B (SHB 1 AB).  This has been on my list since I began observing double stars seriously ~2015, and have tried frequently.  Argyle, in his "Anthology of Visual Double Stars" published in 2019, says no living person has seen Procyon B visually.  But I know of two: a gifted young observer in Russia who reported it in a 10-inch, and a European gentleman who reported it in an 18-inch from Namibia.  Procyon B is at periastron now, 5" separation and nearly due north, so it's the best time to see the 0.46/10.8 magnitude pair. 

I was using a 7-inch off-axis mask (equivalent to f/14.3) on my 20-inch f/5:

"Despite the indifferent seeing, I tried Procyon when it transited -- and I think I saw SHB 1 AB!  I was at 7-inches, 285x with a neodymium filter, and using the central peephole in the eyepiece cap.  Nothing seen with the star at the center of the very narrow field, but when I placed it with A along the southern edge of the peephole, much of the diffraction was absorbed and there was a steady star, about the right separation and about the right magnitude, about exactly north PA: all of which confirms B.  To check for aberrations, I placed A along the north and east and west edge of the peephole and did not see any such brightening or star.  I moved A back to the south edge and repeated the observation.  Now, given my history with this star [a couple years prior I claimed to have seen it using an occulting bar in an eyepiece, but it turned out to be an internal reflection only], I would like to repeat the observation on another night.  And it would be nice to see the star cleanly, without employing tricks like peepholes or occulting bars.  But I'm excited by this and feel better about this observation than those in the past."

Unfortunately, no other opportunity to repeat the observation presented itself for the rest of 2025 -- looking forward to having it happen in 2026!

Mark

[Jamie Dillon, DDK]

You're an enterprising observer, McCarthy.

Meanwhile, you said, "Procyon B is at periastron now ..."

Hope you mean apastron.

[mccart...@yahoo.com]

You're right!  I always get those terms confused, a kind if dyslexia, frustrating to me since 80% of my observing is doubles!

Mark

[Ted Hauter]

My highlight was solar the weekend I knew I had to move out of my rental home (went a few miles away, East facing yard this time for solar mornings!) 

and all that entailed. 

Even with that my cares soared far above.

They say when one looks for God they are looking too high.

Can't look to find Him more than to the Sun.

God bless.

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[Mark Wagner]

For me it's the same year after year, the people in the hobby.  The new ones I meet and the old ones I get to see again.  Never get tired of it.

On Thursday, December 18, 2025 at 9:02:15 PM UTC-8 akars...@gmail.com wrote:

[Howard Banich]

For me, my most memorable view of 2025 was of Barnard's E as it was rising toward the meridian back in April. I wrote all about it in the October issue of S&T, and I'll always treasure how jet black the sky background was, even at low power - every view was presented so beautifully in the eyepiece. A top-notch night!

Howard

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[Akarsh Simha]

On Fri, Dec 19, 2025 at 9:27 PM Howard Banich <hba...@gmail.com> wrote:

For me, my most memorable view of 2025 was of Barnard's E as it was rising toward the meridian back in April. I wrote all about it in the October issue of S&T, and I'll always treasure how jet black the sky background was, even at low power - every view was presented so beautifully in the eyepiece. A top-notch night!

I thought you'd mention the Antennae Galaxies view from April. Having seen your sketch, I was definitely mindblown.

Regards

Akarsh

 

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[Joel Lee]

I just completed my second year officially in this hobby. This was the first year I left the house to do imaging/observing beyond the backyard. I'd say the greatest moments were any of the trips. This includes my first ever trip out to Laguna mountain's campgrounds as an imaging test and to look for bobcats (this was a wild trip), looking for and imaging comet tsuchinshan off a cliff at Mount Hamilton or the beach, my first time meeting other observers/imagers at Henry Coe, and my first star party at Calstar. Whether it's sharing the view with others through my or their scope or enjoying curry ramen with some friends as the subs roll in, I doubt any of them will ever get old for me. There were also a lot of things I thought I wouldn't be able to do/see for a while but I was able to due to the kind people at the nights out or at Calstar. 

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[Howard Banich]

The Antennae were a close second - and on the same night!

Howard

On Sat, Dec 20, 2025 at 12:03 AM Akarsh Simha <akars...@gmail.com> wrote:

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[Steve Gottlieb]

I wasn’t able to pick one object or moment — so here are several experiences from 2025 (33 nights at dark sites and a large number at home)

April (Texas Star Party): Wednesday was the best and longest night of five observing with Lowrey's 48-inch behemoth.  We were joined by Akarsh, Sanath and Josh Wright.  Highlights included resolving the 3" double nuclei at the center of NGC 3773, the striking pseudo-ring galaxy NGC 3773, the unusual polar-bulge galaxy UGC 10043, and a good view of the globular cluster Terzan 3. On Thursday night we were also joined by well-known observers Stephen O'Meara (Botswana), Larry Mitchell (Houston), Brent Archinal (Flagstaff), and Doug McCormick (Houston). Among other objects, we viewed the Double Quasar at 813x and 1084x. At 6" separation, the lensed pair was widely split at this high power and visible continuously as sharp points. The southern "B" lensed image was clearly brighter.

June (GSSP): On Friday night, Jimi and I observed the distant quasar HS 1603+3820 in Corona Borealis in my 24-inch.  At z = 2.48, the light-travel time is 11.1 billion years! Several people came over to take a look at this 16th magnitude point of light.

August (Glen County):  I observed the Ring Nebula (along with Dan Smiley) using Night Vision at 126x. Turning up the gain, not only was the central star easily visible continuously, but so was a second fainter star inside the ring on the NW side.  And a third star was fairly easy to see along the southwest edge of the annulus.  Next time go for four?

October (Glen County):  Using my 24-inch, I finished observing the last few objects in the IC I catalogue (over 1400 objects).  The vast majority of these were discovered by the French observer Stephane Javelle using a 30-inch f/23 refractor at the Nice observatory in southern France and they're damn faint!  I doubt anyone else has been crazy enough to attempt this project before and the night happened to be 8 years to the day after I completed the NGC. Muriel just finished posting a 3-part OR on her observations on the same nights.

November (OzSky star party, Australia):  The star party ended up being pretty much a bust due to weather, but with clear skies on the last night I had another mind-boggling view of the Tarantula, which I think might be my favorite emission nebula in the sky through a large telescope and an O III filter.  Did I mention it's naked-eye, located in another galaxy, and completely dwarfs the Orion Nebula in size?  

Steve

[Akarsh Simha]

Steve I thought you canceled OzSky this year which is why you made it to Texas. Did you do both, or is that from last year?

Also the ring galaxy I think you mean NGC 3646

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[Steve Gottlieb]

Oh, I cancelled OzSky in November at the last minute and made it to Texas, but did not cancel the March OzSky!  Thanks for the correction on the ring galaxy.

Steve

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[Akarsh Simha]

This year has been one of the best astronomy years for me, and it's thanks to Randy Pufahl who made it feasible for me to manage my 28-inch by myself late last year. A year ago almost to the date, we had the 28-inch rolling off the truck bed with a powered winch. Thanks to Aaron Turner for selling me the ramps.

The aperture upgrade to a 28-inch has made me feel like I'm that teenager who started exploring the night sky twenty years ago through his 8-inch, all over again, even if my back doesn't agree.

It also helped that I wasn't employed for the first quarter of the year, but even thereafter, this hobby is my life's passion at the moment and I try as much as I can to get out under the stars. Why? Because after every observation session, I feel for a while like Roy Batty from Blade Runner: "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate." I think I will remember at least some of these immersive visual experiences of our universe on my deathbed.

Armed with this new "technology" I went out observing independently with the 28-inch for the first time on January 1st this year. What a way to ring in the new year.

Yes, I still use that drill carrying case as my counterweight. That night had lots of intermittent clouds, but I was so excited about this new ability I had to go observing. Still what came out of that long winter night was pretty decent I must say:

 
Left: Thor's Helmet, Right: NGC 891

Later that month, I got to "test run" my 12-inch travel scope built by Sanath at a star party in south India. We took it on a real rough ride on a bus over rough roads as a stress test. His triple-whiffletree cell was up to the task. Of course I used it for southern targets

Nothing significant in February. March saw a lot of public outreach in Bangalore because of all the hype around the "planetary alignment"

April was one of the best months of astronomy this year. I helped Sanath run his stall at NEAF 2025, meeting Phil Harrington, Ronald Stoyan, Diana Hannikainen, Al Nagler (RIP) and others at NEAF was quite the experience.

After that we both ended up at Jimi's observatory. Steve has already talked about that time. I had my 28-inch (which once belonged to Jimi!) set up just outside Jimi's 48-inch observatory, made for this nice picture of duelling telescopes:

I spent nine nights at the Lowreys', very grateful for that. I was still on my career break then. Jimi and I had two absolutely incredible nights after TSP. I didn't make any detailed sketches during TSP, focused on working through many targets, but I present a rough rendition of features seen in M 66 through the 48-inch:

Another highlight from those two nights was the trio of galaxies around NGC 3169. We picked up so much detail in that group, including a tidal shred at 10:14.2 03:34. Jimi's 48-inch is truly a remarkable instrument.

In May, I observed from Goldendale Sky Village in Washington as a guest of Bhavesh Parekh from Portland. My favorite observation was that of NGC 3718, a peculiar galaxy in Ursa Major. Hanging out with Portland visual observers and telescope makers was fun, and I also made an opportunistic trip to Howard Banich's place to do an analysis of my telescope build and take some advice for improvements.

June 2025 obviously was Golden State Star Party. It was fun to hang out with everyone, a surprise appearance by Jimi and Connie Lowrey who had said they may not make it. Howard and Judy Banich were missed. Hanging out with everyone was a blast, and we did some good observing too by the way. My favorite memories were exploring the dark nebulae in M8, and picking up globular clusters in Barnard's Galaxy.

(BTW, I'm still slowly chipping away at Gottlieb's "Off the Deep End" list)

In July, I spent time observing with my mother, but also observing galaxy chains. One of my favorite memories was looking at Shk 166 in Ursa Minor from Guacamole. Here's a sketch of VV 90 instead from one of those July nights:

August saw me do a good amount of binocular observing from local sites (Fremont Peak, RCDO), but also a memorable deep-sky night at Tanveer's excellent find near Monitor Pass, checking out the deep south. Hickson 90 in PsA from the night:

September new moon was my most incredible run of the year, spending five nights in the eastern Sierra working (pretty productively!) during the day and observing at night. Some sketches:

Left: Helix Nebula, Right: NGC 520

November saw me again in Texas observing with Jimi Lowrey, Steve Gottlieb and Howard Banich on Jimi's 48-inch. My favorite observation from then was the Abell 151 galaxy cluster framed around IC 80. In addition to deep-sky delicacies, we enjoyed some very good Tex Mex:

This December we had two exceptional nights at "Route 66". I just posted the ORs. Here are my favorite sketches from the nights to cap this post:

Left: Hubble's Variable Nebula, Right: NGC 1300

As an engineer, I am used to thinking about metrics. I despise bringing metrics into my hobby, but what I've found is that it motivates me to expose myself to these wonderful experiences. I had a total of about 44 nights, maybe 35+ of them under dark skies, logging 240 observations of objects old and new. Pretty sure 2025 will be hard to beat.

Clear Skies

Akarsh

[Jamie Dillon, DDK]

In the sky, the coolest observation was naked eye, zeta-1 Sco. Caught it finally in May from the Pinnacles. Here's what I wrote then, excitedly.

"I'd found out years ago that zeta-1 Sco is the most luminous star we can see naked eye from Earth. Finally went to see it firsthand. And it turns out it's a cinchy hop, at the south end of the False Comet. Easy to spot in binocs, even when the southern end of the tail of Scorpius isn't all that high yet. There's a distinct pair of stars right below the bright open cluster ngc 6231; zeta-1 is the one to the west, on the right for us. In fact zeta-1 might well be a member of that cluster.

"This is a serious star, a B1 hypergiant, putting out more than a million solar luminosities. Has 60 solar masses. Possibly a Luminous Blue Variable. It's 6,000 ly from here, so 4x farther away than the Belt Stars in Orion. One of many objects where it's what you're looking at that's captivating.

"Interesting to compare it to Deneb, which is another very serious star. Closer to us at around 2,600 lightyears, Deneb's an A2 supergiant. with 50,000 solar luminosities, ca 15 solar masses, 100 solar diameters. So this big engine in the tail of Scorpius is putting out 20 times the total energy of Deneb."

DDK sez absolutely check it out.

The other big event was on the ground, noodling out that the SW lot on the Peak is good for observing again, after years of being toast. Giving myself credit for figuring this out, there was certainly no announcement. Rolled by the lot late at night, 3 times over the spring and summer. No lights there. Had a fun night of observing there last month.

For years, the SW lot was my number one default spot for stargazing. I can get attached to observing spots. Now it's perceptually darker than before. Since the trees grew up on the west edge of the lot, now you can't see the lights of Salinas and Castroville.

And of course there's the subtext of being quite glad the SW lot is open, given the crap that happened at the west side of the Pinnacles this year. I'd gotten quite fond of that site over years. What I hadn't mentioned here, one of the rangers, Seth, was all weird about access back in February and May. Yeah and after years of the rangers saying this is your park. Some rollercoaster ride we had, you can't observe here yes you can now you can't. Our park indeed.

Grateful that the SW lot on the Peak is open for the foreseeable. Here's that spot on what for a long time was a typical evening.

[Richard Navarrete]

Can you sleep in your car in the lot?

Richard

Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS

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[Ted Hauter]

I can take a nap after a long day in a car to get ready for a most of the nighter. How anyone can do more...

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[Jamie Dillon, DDK]

Asking about the SW lot on the Peak, the Beastmaster was all:

"Can you sleep in your car in the lot?"

Yep, same as ever. You bring camping gear to Coe, Richard. There are two pretty campgrounds right near the SW lot.

[Richard Navarrete]

Yeah, I have camped at the Peak a few times. With the lot open I’ll probably do it again. I was mostly asking for others who might rather sleep in their cars.

Richard

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[Mark Wagner]

Maybe Jamie meant you can sleep in your car in a campsite.  But not the SW lot.

We sure had great times in that lot in the early days!

[Jamie Dillon, DDK]

No, I meant you can do both.

[Mark Wagner]

Thanks Jamie, that good news.

[Shashi Sathya]

I went out for imaging only twice..once to Montebello to for Comet C/2025-A6-Lemmon and other time with Akarsh to R6, which turned out be the best night of the year.  Views thru his 28" scope was extraordinary.   Did manage to take images of M81,M82, M42 and IC434 while I was there. In Oct at FPOA, for the first time I saw Veil Nebula, Heart Nebula, Soul Nebula, California Nebula etc.,  through Nightvision glasses and was literally blown away by the details ( I seem to have forgotten the gentleman who had this).  

Hopefully 2026 turns out to be even more fun!

Cheers

Shashi.

[Rod Brown]

Here are my astro-highlights for 2025:

• My observation logs show that I got out 34 nights. I probably went out three or four more where I was giving a sky tour to others but did not record any observations. So total about 38 nights, not bad, but a few less than last year.
• I traveled to six star parties (enabled by retiring in the spring). Alas, the weather was not very cooperative for four of them, and at those I had only one night of observing each. But I got to some great places, met some good folks, and had fun.
• The observation highlight of the year for me was the supernova in NGC 7331, my first one. I was late to it, observing it past its peak, but it was still super cool.
• Maybe the thing that helped my observing most in 2025 was when I noticed one evening that the streetlight on the corner by my house was out. A few days later I looked up toward it during the day and saw that it was not just out, it was gone! Very strange, but I am not complaining! I can now observe from my driveway, the only real place I have with a decent view less obscured by trees or homes, Bortle 4.5 on a decent night.
• I had a couple significant equipment additions for the year, but the best was the 6" refractor I picked up the weekend after Thanksgiving. I got the itch for one after seeing some fine views of open clusters in the scope of another club member last spring. I've only had it out three nights so far, but looking forward to more time with it in 2026.
• The biggest surprise of the year for me (other than the disappearing streetlight) was how much fun I had with an Astroscan. I refurbished one that had been returned from a club loan, took it out to test it, and found that after all the loading, unloading, setup, collimation, (observing), teardown, loading, unloading associated with each time I take out my 18" dob, there is a lot to be said for being able to walk out of the house, set up, and observing in less than five minutes. Not to mention the weight difference. The Astroscan was somehow more fun than binoculars -- maybe it is that red plastic and blob shape looking so 70s.
• Retirement has also allowed me to spend more time doing astronomy-related volunteer work as a board member of my local club, maintaining scopes for my local library, and helping to expand the national Library Telescope Program. It has been satisfying to help other people get excited by the night sky.

Rod

On Thursday, December 18, 2025 at 9:02:15 PM UTC-8 akars...@gmail.com wrote:

[Jeff Crilly]

Hard to choose something specific , but one standout was the BISP trip into Nevada.

Pretty rough trip, with only a single night workable, but I’m glad I made the trip.

[Akarsh Simha]

On Sat, Jan 3, 2026 at 1:43 PM Shashi Sathya <subs...@gmail.com> wrote:

I went out for imaging only twice..once to Montebello to for Comet C/2025-A6-Lemmon and other time with Akarsh to R6, which turned out be the best night of the year.  Views thru his 28" scope was extraordinary.   

I was hoping one of y'all would write some about the views through the 28-inch that night :-D. I fear that I give the illusion on TAC that I'm the only one who can see all those knots and tidal tails or a dozen galaxies in the same field (hallucination much?)

Regards

Akarsh

[Ted Hauter]

Met up with Peter Natscher at LSA and we figured all the times we tried since it had already been two years.

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[Shashi Sathya]

It was practically first time for me with such large scope.  So all objects you showed were great.  I pointed my gear to M81/M82 only after seeing through your eyepiece. Same with the Horsehead.  It was my first time to actually see the 'head'. Many say its very difficult to make out the shape.  The skies as R6 definitely helped.   I have to check your sketches to recall all the objects.  Some were M51, Leo Triplets,  M33, Jupiter transit, Saturn among several others.  Not to mention literal meteor shower!!!  I wonder if Akshay has processed any of the images of meteors.  

Perhaps for coming new moon, we can go again :) to R6.  Jamie, Mark et al can come and verify what you see is what they see as well :). Now that will be fun night!

Regards

Shashi.