Good or Bad Idea

[rabbithutch]

I've been playing around with the idea of creating a Word document that contains a drawn circle with a dot in the center to represent Polaris. From that point I would draw lines for reference. I would also have space for date, time, place of observation and weather conditions. I even thought it might be useful to print a legend of circles or dots of varying sizes to represent size of observed objects. I use "size" rather than "magnitude" because I'm not sure whether or not apparent size is affected by brightness or if "size" and "magnitude" mean the same for purposes of sketching.

Maybe this is reinventing the wheel and I haven't learned of the original. If there is a file already created by someone that I could download and print as needed, it is probably better than anything I can create.

????

[acey]

Your idea's fine but I don't understand the bit about a circle with a dot in the centre representing Polaris and the lines of reference. Isn't that just a star map?

[rabbithutch]

I was over thinking it a bit, no doubt. Thank you for pointing out that I will not always have Polaris in the field of view. I was thinking that I can always see Polaris in the sky and it will give me a size reference. Perhaps a better idea would be to identify my scale of circles as to which is the size of Polaris.

Can someone point me to a size scale that will identify several heavenly bodies with each? From something I read (don't remember where), I recall that sizes range through -1, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6. IIRC -1 is reserved for Sirius, the brightest/biggest star. I don't recall which size best fits Polaris. Is it 2?

Thank you for the input.

[m.tweedy]

try this

The Simple Observing Log