2025 was a busy year. Outside the astronomy work, my (then) fiancée was diagnosed with MS, we had our wedding, had to put down our cat, adopted a new cat, bought a house and moved, and had our honeymoon. So, it was a big year.
But how did I do with astronomy?
As expected, the big focus this year has been the YouTube channel. This has, unfortunately killed my momentum on the Almagest. I only managed to get a single post done regarding the Almagest this entire year.
Rather, much of my free time has been dedicated to research for the YouTube channel. Last year, the videos I put up were mostly just my SCA classes slightly reformatted. This year, the only one that this was true for was the Flame Haired Stars. The video I did on Orb: On the Movement of the Heavens was a bit of a cheat too since that was not all that different from my overview of astronomy video. And because it was released barely a day after the anime finished airing on Netflix, it drove a great deal of the growth on the channel.
I did begin the series that was really what I wanted to do with the channel from the beginning, putting together a series on the Almagest. I’ve only finished videos through Book IV, but as the year turns over, I have a script complete for Book V and am in the process on writing the script for Book VI. So the Almagest hasn’t been forgotten entirely. Rather, I have to say that I enjoy getting to return to some of this material that I covered in this blog 3-4 years ago. When writing the blog, I’m very much in the weeds and things are stream of consciousness. But getting to look back on it and approach it from a high level, Ptolemy strategy and reasoning becomes more obvious. I often tell people that Ptolemy isn’t great about telling us where things are going and you have to figure out what’s going on as you work through the math. This makes it challenging. So this series is meant to help understand and motivate what is going on. When that series is complete, my plan is to then go back and make some videos on select mathematical topics which will, again, adapt some of my classes that I’ve already prepared for the SCA. But, it will probably take a year or two to complete this conceptual series.
Most other videos were entirely new research. I’m particularly pleased with the one on the Astrological Flood Panic of 1524, although this one didn’t receive all that many views. The story behind this I find is particularly interesting as the inciting publication really wasn’t what people made it out to be. Researching this video was especially interesting because the majority of the primary sources I used weren’t translated. Secondary sources often quoted from them, but there was a great deal of original translation work involved in this and I had to get the help from a specialist in middle-high German for some of it.
In the SCA, I also entered Calontir’s Kingdom Arts & Sciences championship again. This competition is especially challenging because it requires three entries, and each has to be in a different judging category. In previous years I’ve entered, I tended to only enter one item related to astronomy as it’s hard to really do something that isn’t entered into the “research paper” category. But, this year, I produced a physical object, the Instrumentum Primi Mobilis1, and was able to enter the restoration to the Constellations volvelle in the Astronomicum Caesareum2. The third entry was still fell in the “research paper” category, but was a paper on the life and astronomical works of Peter Apian to help ground the other two entries. This too will be turned into a video for the YouTube channel at some point. The Linda Hall Library in KC was kind enough to let me come film a video on the instrument with their copy of the original text, and I’m hoping to return to film the broader view on Apian there as well, as they had numerous other books by him that I will discuss as well.
I was also able to squeeze three videos out of my honeymoon to Italy: One on the history of the Gregorian calendar, with a focus on how Churches were used to try to determine the length of the year, as well as one of the driving forces behind it – Ignazio Danti. A second was on the brief golden age in astronomy in Sicily, which could have been a serious competitor to the high point of Islamic astronomy in modern day Spain, but petered out. Third, I did a video that was a broader overview of astronomical history in Italy that is still visible today.
There’s also some projects that will eventually become videos for the channel, but I haven’t done yet. This year I also put together a new SCA class on Chaucer’s use of astronomy in the Canterbury Tales. I’m planning on recording that video in the spring to release on an appropriate day for the pilgrimage referenced in the tales.
Aside from the YouTube channel, this year I also attended the 16th Biennial Conference on the History of Astronomy. Getting to attend a conference with so many people with similar interests was wonderful and I’ll definitely be back in the future.
For 2026, I already have several irons in the fire.
First, I’m working on research for a new class/video on the relationship of astrology and political power.
Second, I’m planning a few new astronomical instruments. Most likely, I’ll build a nocturnal, but I’ve also been coming up with plans for reproducing Ptolemy’s parallactic instrument.
Third, the trip to Greece inspired me to research Minoan astronomy but the vast majority of this is grounded in archaeoastronomy. Thus, I’m wanting to approach this more interdisciplinary than I usually do by including friends with relevant degrees.
Lastly, I’d really like to return to the Almagest. The end is so close!
Hopefully 2026 will be a good year for me.