A Decent 'all in one' A2 sized deep sky objects map ?

[powerlord]

Anyone come across one ? Ideally I'd love a sort of A2 sized ,equirectangular format map with the main nebulas and galaxies on there - wee picture, approx size, approx brightness. say, over 5'x5' ?

I find myself often zooming in and out, in and out of skysafari when something like that would be great.

searching hasn't turned up anything.

trying to find galaxies big enough to image and in areas of the sky I can see, etc is otherwise a bit of a pain. I did suggest to sky safari that it'd be great if as well as filtering my mag, you could filter by size, but that suggestion seems to have gone knowhere.

Having a nice big print out would be good for 'crossing them off' or marking dates you imaged them too ?

Oh, and I don't mean a star map. I'm not interested in stars ( 🤩 ). just an uncluttered 'target map' kinda thing, nebula, galaxies ?

stu

Edited March 16, 2022 by powerlord

[ollypenrice]

I sympathize with the problem and can only tell you my own closest approach to a solution. I sometimes start with Kepple and Sanner https://tavcso.hu/en/product/TMB05P

Their volumes are pretty comprehensive and let you trawl through a constellation while looking for potential targets.. I note these down on that long-forgotten flat, white stuff or, failing that, a roll of papyrus and return to my PC screen to look them up, see how they will frame, etc.

Olly

[powerlord]

yeh, that same process, but with sky safari is where I am just now. ..does seem like there should be a better way 😕

 

[The Lazy Astronomer]

9 minutes ago, powerlord said:

yeh, that same process, but with sky safari is where I am just now. ..does seem like there should be a better way 😕

 

Stellarium allows you to filter out objects below a specified angular size - I've been using it whilst looking at what galaxies to image in the upcoming months and filtering out all the smaller ones that my 550mm focal length just can't do any justice 😔

[Stu]

5 hours ago, powerlord said:

Anyone come across one ? Ideally I'd love a sort of A2 sized ,equirectangular format map with the main nebulas and galaxies on there - wee picture, approx size, approx brightness. say, over 5'x5' ?

I find myself often zooming in and out, in and out of skysafari when something like that would be great.

searching hasn't turned up anything.

trying to find galaxies big enough to image and in areas of the sky I can see, etc is otherwise a bit of a pain. I did suggest to sky safari that it'd be great if as well as filtering my mag, you could filter by size, but that suggestion seems to have gone knowhere.

Having a nice big print out would be good for 'crossing them off' or marking dates you imaged them too ?

Oh, and I don't mean a star map. I'm not interested in stars ( 🤩 ). just an uncluttered 'target map' kinda thing, nebula, galaxies ?

stu

Have you tried the planning tools in SkySafari?  You can generate target lists based on pretty anything you need to; object type, altitude, azimuth, constellation, angular size, double separation, date, time, catalogue, your location etc etc. pretty powerful.

eg this is a search for galaxies above 45 degrees altitude, magnitudes between 5 and 10, size between 5 and 10 arc minutes giving 39 results.

[Zermelo]

4 hours ago, powerlord said:

I did suggest to sky safari that it'd be great if as well as filtering my mag, you could filter by size

The Sky Safari planner tool allows you to select Galaxies as an object type, and then under the "Restrict to Ranges" section you can set minimum and maximum object size in arc minutes. Select other filters according to preference.

I suppose there is an element of objectivity in deciding the dimensions of an object like a galaxy, but the dimensions in the details in the search results list are consistent with the filter criteria.

Seems I type more slowly than @Stu

 

[powerlord]

thanks I will have a play, but though better than nothing it still isn't very helpful unless you have all round visibility. so galaxies over 30 say, ain't that useful without me still clicking through every one to find the ones in the NW I can see, etc.

Now, if that plan affected the live view, filtering off everythinng else so it actually showed all that stuff it would be great - but afaik it doesn't.

[Zermelo]

The Planner lets you filter on those that will be visible at your location on a particular date and during a time range.
It also lets you specify a particular range of azimuth and altitude.
You can also specify a specific constellation.