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Observation Planning Software


Bioboybill

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I was wondering what software people use to plan and record their observations? I know there are a couple of websites that show what's in the sky any given time, and obviously software like Stellarium can help a bit, but I wondered if anybody used software that compiled lists for you and had somewhere to put notes etc. I have seen a piece of software called Deep Sky, but wondered if anybody used that or anything better?

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I use Astroplanner. Absolutely love it. If you want to go further than the Messier Catalog you will have to pay around 45$, for me it was worth it.

For me the key features i use are:

Be able to fast get a list of all visible objects at a current date, sort them by size & altitude, and then you slowly cut down your list until you choose what you want.

It also has a great source of images to see if you're chasing the invisible OIII (as i have done a lot of times now :) )

It shows Moonphases, and you can preview FOV, as well as keep track of your sessions. Isn't the most intuitive software to start, but if you spend little time with it, you get the nack of it.

http://astroplanner.net/

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I use SkySafari 4 Plus to learn about the night sky and control my Evo 8. I was pleased to find that it also gives recommendations for the time and place. These can be sorted in a number of ways including magnitude which saves me looking for stuff which I wouldn't be able to see anyway. You can put selected items into a viewing list before the session and then go through it, or while you're observing and you find interesting objects you can mark them as observed and add comments either at the time or later on.

The added bonus of the app is that it has a great deal of information about the various objects, so I find I'm learning and observing at the same time.

Eric.

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Astroplanner for me too.

Something that I really think is good is being able to download any of the hundreds of the User Contributed Plans, these include pretty much any observing list you can think of! I'm currently working through Astronomical Leagues PN's, Abell galaxy cluster and RASC Finest NGC's.

If you use a tablet in the field you can export any list that you are using in Astroplanner and import it to SkySafari. I make written notes while at the scope so I add all my observations manually into Astroplanner the next day but you could quite easily add them to SkySafari then import them back to Astroplanner that way!

It really is such a good program, takes a little while to get used to but well worth it. :)

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