Just went through my observing index (google doc with a list of every observation I have ever recorded in one of my astronomy log books) and updated it from late 2021 to be up to date through 2026.
I have done a lot of astronomy. My tally of recorded objects is:
The Sun (13 times not counting the separate H-alpha log which has not yet been indexed)
Mercury (including the Mercury transit of the Sun)
Venus (14 times)
the Moon (50 times)
asteroid 4 Vesta
Mars (29 times)
Jupiter (53 times)
Saturn (44 times)
the 2020 Great Conjunction of Jupiter & Saturn
Uranus (3 times)
Neptune (recorded once)
2 Lunar eclipses
1 Solar eclipse (I've seen at least three, but only the 2017 one was recorded and that was the only total one.)
4 comets
the Milky Way
dozens of meteors
a dozen satellites including a sketch of the ISS at 57x
2 weather balloons
34 double and multiple stars (105 observations)
65 out of 110 Messier Objects (59%)
60 out of 7840 New General Catalogue (NGC) objects, not counting Messier duplicates.
1 out of 5386 Index Catalogues (IC) objects
12 miscellaneous other deep sky objects and asterisms
for a total of 137 distinct Deep Sky Objects (comprising 515 observations)
Of the Caldwell Catalogue (made up of a curated subset of the NGC and IC), I have observed 16 out of the roughly 76-90 Caldwell objects visible to me (17% to 21%), or 16 out of the 109 total (15%)
Over the course of 6 log books (Observational Astronomy class 2017, Audited Observational Astronomy class 2018, Personal Astronomy Log 2020, Astronomy Log Book 2021, Summer 2021-present Astronomy Log)
With 26 telescopes, ranging in aperture from 2" to 24".
There are a handful of objects I have seen over the years but did not record in a log, particularly during Observatory public nights.
The vast majority of the log entries are concentrated on 2020 and 2021, before the Observatory reopened to the public. There were no log entries in 2025 and very few in 2024 and 2026. I was still doing a lot of astronomy in 2024, though in 2025 and 2026 I have really let astronomy take the backseat compared to my other interests.
And as you may be able to tell I'm getting back into it, despite the terrible weather.
There are certainly more skilled and experienced observers than I. I mean there's people trying to see every NGC object, that's literally thousands of objects. And here I am not even having completed the Messiers. Hell there's a fairly common challenge where people try to get together at a star party and look at every Messier object in a single night (Messier Marathon).
But it's still cool to tally it all up and see just how much I've done.
