2024 in review
Since my blog is about backyard astronomy, it is appropriate for me to ask, on this first day of 2025, "How was 2024, in terms of stargazing opportunities?"
Amateur astronomers are not always the best note takers! Some of us may keep meticulous records of our observations, while others of us can't be bothered with the chore of writing things down. Throughout my amateur astronomy career, I myself have been sometimes better or worse when it comes to taking notes.
In the 1980's, when I got my start in astrophotography, I needed to take notes pertaining to each of my exposures (film type and ASA speed, exposure length, subject or target, etc.). My camera was mechanical and the film was analog. There was no automatic saving of "metadata" in the pre-digital world of photography. It was up to me to write it down. It could take several nights of astrophotography, spaced out over weeks or months, before I finished a roll of film and could examine my negatives and see if my pictures turned out. I was good about writing down all of those exposure details, until I got a feel for what worked. After establishing the proper exposure parameters for most targets, I felt like it was a waste of time to continue keeping a log. Each night when I set up my telescope for astrophotography, I already had enough work to do and didn't want to take the additional effort and time to write down all the details of what I was doing. So I didn't bother.
As I consider all of the data that I lost by not keeping a log of every session, the most basic piece of information that I regret no longer having is the time and date of those observations. I still have the pictures I took of various astronomical targets, but I don't know when I took them. And I can't recall the details of my exposures, other than the type of film I used (because I still have the negatives).
Because I didn't keep records, another interesting and historical record was lost: The number of nights per year that I set up my telescope for astrophotography for the majority of the years going back to 1980. And you might ask, "Why is that important?"
Well, the number of nights per year that I can set up my telescope tells me a lot about myself and my location. We amateur astronomers usually don't make any money for our time and efforts out there under the stars. Our equipment is expensive, and it will never pay for itself in real money. The value of a telescope is measured by how well it does its job for us, how much enjoyment it brings, and how long it lasts without costing us more money in repairs and upgrades.
So, it is natural for the would-be telescope buyer to wonder, "How often will I get to use it? Will it be worth it to me in the long run, spending so much money on something that I might only rarely use?"
But we can't answer those questions in advance. We can only answer them by looking back on our experience from some future point in time. Meanwhile, if we haven't kept a log of all the nights that we set up our telescopes in a given year, then we'll have only a rough guess at how useful our equipment has been to us, and how kind Mother Nature was.
When I got started in astronomy, I was living in central Pennsylvania. If you've lived in that region for a couple of years, I needn't tell you how cloudy the skies are there! The cold dry air coming down from Canada meets the warm moist air coming up from the Gulf of Mexico, and the clouds just stall there over the Appalachian plateau in the middle of Pennsylvania. I didn't keep a log, per se, but I knew I wasn't getting many clear nights in my first few years of backyard astronomy. I sometimes didn't see the sun for weeks at a time. I can't be specific as to how many times it happened, but let's just say that I was disappointed often when, after eagerly waiting for months to see a certain celestial event (solar eclipse, lunar eclipse, planetary conjunction, etc.), on the day of its occurrence, clouds got in the way, and I missed out. I had to move away from Pennsylvania and find better skies.
It's not just the weather, though, that can take a toll on our backyard astronomy. Work schedules, family gatherings, meeting up with friends, and just watching our favorite shows on TV can interfere with our hobby and cause our yearly number of telescope outings to slip. Let's face it, given a choice between staying inside where it's warm or hauling a bunch of telescope gear outside where it's cold and dark, we're likely to take a pass on the stargazing. That's the main trouble with backyard astronomy: it's mostly done at night, and nights are meant for sleeping.
Therefore, if we want our telescopes to pay off, we need some kind of observing or imaging project to keep us motivated and active. We might chase after numbered lists of objects, like the 110 Messiers or the 2500 Herschels. Or we might get into deep-exposure astrophotography that requires shooting the same target for weeks, using multiple filters. To be successful at completing these projects in a timely manner, we need to keep up with the nightly advancement of the constellations and get our targets before they're gone for the season. Otherwise, we'll have to wait until next year to finish a given part of the list we're working on.
In April of 2016, I threw my hat into the ring to become a supernova hunter. I knew that I couldn't seriously compete with professional astronomers, because I have a small scope that limits the number of galaxies I can shoot each night. I reasoned that if I couldn't shoot as many galaxies per night as the professionals, then the only way to compete was to increase the number of nights that I set up my telescope to take pictures of galaxies.
That line of reasoning was a game-changer for me. For many years I had no plan for most of my telescope outings. Sure, if there was an eclipse, or if I wanted to get a picture of a bright comet, then I had a good reason to get out there. But when nothing out of the ordinary was happening, then my backyard astronomy had little purpose. I simply went out there, willy-nilly, whenever I felt like it, which wasn't as often as it could have been. Another problem was that astrophotography with film was impossible to do under the bright dome of city night lighting, so whenever I wanted to take pictures through my telescope, I had to load all my gear into the car and drive 50 miles away from home to shoot under a dark sky. Adding the elements of a road trip to a night's worth of astrophotography really cuts down on the number of telescope outings you feel like having per year!
In 2007, I bought a computerized telescope and digital camera to replace my 1980's model telescope and film camera. To be honest, I felt more than a little guilty for spending so much money on a telescope and camera, when I didn't even have a plan or purpose for it. I had only two reasons to buy a new telescope: 1) my old telescope was no longer functioning, and 2) I felt like it was time to get into the 21st century of astronomical gear.
My decision to buy was made after I had put together a short list of criteria for what I wanted in a new telescope: 1) I didn't want to have to travel to dark skies anymore (solved by getting rid of my film camera); 2) I didn't want to guide long exposures anymore (solved by the fast f/2 optics of the HyperStar); and 3) I no longer wanted to perform the time-consuming process of polar alignment on the telescope each night that I set it up (solved by combining the fast optics with the alt-azimuth mounting of the CPC-1100 telescope and the stacking of short exposures because my images were now digital).
Although I was overjoyed by the new telescope and camera, it didn't increase my number of imaging nights per year. I continued to use it as infrequently as I used my old telescope and camera. That is, until I became a supernova hunter.
Without even realizing it, the telescope and camera system I bought in 2007 was an amateur supernova hunter's dream! Fast optics allow short exposures (20-second exposures for astrophotography are considered "short"). Short exposures allow more galaxy pictures to be taken per night. No polar alignment allows faster setup. No guiding means no guide-star setup for each galaxy, which in turn, increases productivity. As if all of these aren't helpful enough, the scope and camera can be connected to my home computer network, meaning I can finally take my nightly astronomical activity indoors! After a 20-minute setup, I can do everything (aim the telescope at each target, focus the camera as needed, and take the exposures) without having to go outside again until the end of the night to put the telescope equipment away.
At the end of 2016, I had some real data regarding my imaging for the first time in 36 years of backyard astronomy! With digital imaging, it is logical to start each session by creating a computer folder to store the night's images. To avoid having to decide on a name for the folder, I named them according to the date. This gave me, practically at a glance, the total number of imaging nights I got in 2016.
Supernova hunting motivated me to shoot on as many nights as possible, so my yearly total gave a better picture of my annual weather patterns. After all, I wasn't just going out when I felt like it anymore; I try to get out there every night that the sky is clear, whether I feel like it or not. And since the setup is quick and painless, I didn't have to choose between my hobby and job or family. I can set up and shoot for a few hours after meeting my other obligations and still get enough sleep for the next day's work.
With my basic note-taking, I could reflect quantitively on 2016. I shot a total of 5,450 galaxies during that year. And I got images on 196 nights. Hmm. If there were 366 nights in 2016 (a leap year), what happened to the other 170 nights? Am I to believe that in Tucson, Arizona, there were 170 cloudy nights during the year? No way! I must not have been trying hard enough in the beginning of the year!
In 2017, I set a goal to achieve 300 nights of imaging. It seemed logical that if 196 nights a year was too few, then setting a goal for 200 was not much of an improvement. And why settle for 250? So, I decided that I should try for 300 nights of imaging.
The quick arithmetic on 300 nights of imaging per year says that you need to average 25 nights of imaging per month. That's quite a commitment! It requires a big adjustment in your daily priorities. Setting up that telescope to shoot galaxies must be placed near the top of your list for each and every day.
Another adjustment that I needed to make, however, was in my definition of an imaging night. Prior to supernova hunting, I required an imaging night to be a night when the sky was clear all night long, and I would take pictures of celestial objects from dusk to dawn. That definition was a carry-over from film astrophotography. During the years when I shot with film, I was concerned with the cost of both the film and the processing of that film. I wouldn't risk shooting with film on a night that was partly cloudy. So, my imaging nights with film were limited to those rare, moonless nights, when the sky was clear all night long. I might have gotten two or three nights per month like that in Pennsylvania, especially with the other motivation killers, like snow on the ground, and dew or frost on the telescope. There were nights, though, when I noted that it cleared off in the middle of the night for a couple of hours. Those nights were usually counted as a loss. I rationalized that there wasn't enough time to get out there and set up the telescope before it either clouded over again or else the sun came up. But here again, the telescope and digital camera that I bought in 2007 had changed all of that. I no longer needed to consider costs of film and processing. And the setup was quick and easy, so I didn't have to figure in an hour's worth of setup time while trying to decide if it was worth it to take advantage of two hours of clear sky.
Therefore, in 2017, I declared that, for my purposes, an imaging night was to be defined as any night that I had enough clear sky to get an image of one galaxy, as long as the image was of good enough quality to tell whether there is a supernova in the galaxy or not. After all, I'm not taking "pretty pictures." I'm only looking for supernovae. So, if a poor shot of a galaxy in hazy skies is good enough to detect a supernova, then it was worth setting up the telescope on that night! Not only that, but in order to get that shot of a single galaxy, I needed to have enough clear sky to do the telescope's three-star alignment and achieve good focus. Setting the bar this low gave me even more motivation to set up my telescope. It had to be raining or threatening to rain, in order for me to pass on a given night.
For the record, I did achieve my goal in 2017 of getting 300 nights of imaging. In fact, 2017 was my all-time high for imaging nights. I got 317 nights of imaging in that year. Also that year, I succeeded in getting images on 100 nights in a year, with perfect-score (imaging every night) months in April, May, June, September, and October. Something I haven't been able to achieve since.
I continued to achieve at least 300 nights of imaging for the next three years. And then in 2021, everything fell apart. I lost my job and was forced to take an early retirement, which, in turn, forced me to sell my house and relocate. I lost an entire month of imaging during the sale of the house and moving to a new place, and that was enough to prevent me from getting 300 nights of imaging in 2021. After the move, I settled into my new routine, and by the end of 2022, I realized that the weather at my new residence (just a few miles across town) was worse than my old one, and 300 nights of imaging appeared to be no longer possible. I proved this again to myself in 2023, when despite my best efforts, I could only get 282 nights of imaging.
So how does 2024 compare to the previous years? The graph at the top of this page tells all! You can see that April of 2021 was when I lost my job and relocated to a section of Tucson which is closer to the mountains. This brought me cloudier and rainier conditions, especially during the cold month of February, and again in the summer monsoon season, peaking in July and August. Being retired, the only thing stopping me from getting out there and setting up the scope for imaging was the weather. So, in 2021 and 2022, where you see only a couple of imaging nights in both July and August, that wasn't because I just didn't feel like setting up the scope. It was because there was no usable sky all night long during those months!
Based on my graph, I have to say that 2024 compared well to 2023. I got 282 nights of imaging in both of these years. July and August of 2023 and 2024 were not as bad as they were in 2021 and 2022. The highlight of 2024 was the month of December, in which I had 31 nights of imaging. The only perfect score of the year!
Note particularly the month of May. The graphs of all the years are in agreement that May is consistently the best month for imaging. Since 2016, I've had perfect scores (31/31 imaging nights) in the month of May during six of the years (consecutively from 2017 to 2022). By comparison, all the years are also in agreement about my worst months of the year: February, July, and August.
What you don't see in this graph, however, are the fruits of my labor. I shot more galaxies (9,329) in 2024 than I did in each of the previous three years, but the number of supernovae that I found (5) in 2024 is tied with 2022 for the most in a year. Oddly, 2022 was a year that I shot the lowest number of galaxies on the fewest number of nights since 2016! In 2017, one of my most productive years of galaxy shooting, I discovered no supernovae!
That's the glaring contradiction in the sport of supernova hunting: To increase your chances of discovery, you need to brute-force it by shooting as many galaxies as possible; and yet all of that productivity may reap fewer rewards than can be achieved with fewer galaxy images and just a little bit of luck.
If you're interested, below is a graph of the years 2017 through 2020, at my former residence on the west side of Tucson. In each of those years, I got at least 300 nights of imaging per year. What's the big dip in October of 2020? That was a month when I had surgery and was not allowed to do any heavy lifting for 3 weeks. Getting your money's worth out of a backyard telescope is not as simple as living in a place that delivers the most clear nights per year.
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