I keep a dated log of what is actually visible from a jetty in the Stockholm archipelago, using modest binoculars and a six-inch reflector. I try to be honest about the many nights when the answer is almost nothing.

I live in a flat in Stockholm and observe from a family cabin on one of the middle islands, about an hour and a half out by bus and boat. The sky there is not dark by any serious standard, since the city throws a broad grey dome across the western horizon, but it is a great deal darker than a balcony, and the water in front of the jetty gives me an unobstructed southern horizon. This site is the tidy version of the notebook I keep on the step.

Everything here is done with modest equipment: a pair of 10x50 binoculars that have been rained on more than once, 15x70s on a cheap tripod, and a six-inch reflector on a simple mount that lives under a tarpaulin from October onwards. I have nothing that tracks, no camera worth mentioning, and no patience for collimating in the dark. What I write down is what those instruments actually showed on a given night, at a given altitude, under a sky I have tried to describe honestly.

I am careful not to promise anyone a view. Latitude decides more than aperture does up here, and a large part of the southern sky is simply unavailable from this shore, while the summer months offer no astronomical darkness at all. Nothing on this site is for sale and nothing is sponsored. I do not name clubs, observatories or the people I share a jetty with. Dates, times, altitudes, conditions and honest impressions are the whole of what I have to offer.