How do you plan your imaging projects?

[Corpze]

So, as the topic say - How do you plan for a imaging sessions - what object to photograph? What criteria to tick off in the planning stage?
What software / website / book? do you use?

I made a video of what I am using, but am I missing something? How to find those sweet, anonymous objects?

Best regards, Daniel / Exo Photography
 

 

[wimvb]

https://aladin.u-strasbg.fr/AladinLite/

Is what I use. Most galaxies are quite small in a 1000 mm fl telescope. I try to frame them such that I get a bit extra in the final image. Usually there is something interesting hidden in the background.

[DaveS]

I just use Stellarium. Had a google for the Interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas. £135 on the long river place . No doubt worth it, but more than I want to spend.

[Elp]

I browse the AAS WWT, could spend hours just searching around.

Then use telescopius to assess framing.

[ONIKKINEN]

Stellarium - the windows downloadable version that is - is what i mostly use to check framing on targets before planning further. You can put your scope and camera details in there and it will show you how the target fits your particular setup. Stellarium images are not very deep though and outside the usual suspects of imaging, the bright messiers and such, the others are quite lackluster and to check a deeper image of what im planning on imaging i use the legacy sky survey browser: https://www.legacysurvey.org/viewer

It has many wavelengths and different catalogues and some are exposed very deep. You can easily see if your target has IFN around it for example.

NINAs sky atlas and framing tool is what i use to create the sequence itself, but i have used it for discovery too. You can input parameters to the sky atlas browser and constrain what you get as a search result. I put in declination of at least 60 and galaxy or galaxy cluster of a size at least 5 arcminutes. Turns out there were a number of galaxies i had not heard of at all that i could image - with NGC 4236 as an example. Beautiful, but very dim spiral galaxy but for some reason not often imaged as images of this are hard to come by.

[iapa]

A mix of Stellarium and SkySafari.

Both link to the mount so I can get a first approximation on target centre - and also the let me stop forward our by hour until meridian.

That gets input to SGPro o I can change targets based on meridian flip times.

With that I was be able to set end RA/Dec for a target and move to the next.

PS I've had 2yrs dead time so need to re do the above

[tomato]

I use Telescopius and Stellarium, and in galaxy season I use the Cambridge Photographic Atlas of Galaxies, but often get frustrated to find some really photogenic examples are just too far South from my location.

[iapa]

3 hours ago, tomato said:

I use Telescopius and Stellarium, and in galaxy season I use the Cambridge Photographic Atlas of Galaxies, but often get frustrated to find some really photogenic examples are just too far South from my location.

I feel your grief @ 55 52" N