Repeating the Experiment that Made Einstein Famous

After Einstein developed his General Theory of Relativity, astronomers were anxious to test his calculations by observing the small gravitational deflections of stars observed near the sun. This obviously required a total solar eclipse, severely constraining the observing opportunities. The first marginal success was completed in 1919 by Eddington. After nearly 100 years and only a dozen attempts, the results still had large error margins. Using a small refractor, a CCD camera, and results from the just-released Gaia star catalog, the experiment was repeated in Wyoming in August 2017. The final results matched Einstein's predictions to the highest ever accuracy and precision during a solar eclipse. The techniques used and the processing steps are presented here. There are several opportunities in the next eight years to repeat the experiment with even better results, if lessons learned here are successfully applied.