How do you know what to image each night?

How do you decide what to image during a night?

I know that imaging targets near zenith is the absolute best but sometimes there are very few targets there worth imagin.
I know that telescopius have good tools and stellarium

Zenith is good but only gives you a couple hours of image time.
For me I look for objects that are about 2 hours above the east horizon at dark so I can follow all night long.

If its above 30 degrees at astronomical dusk I consider it available. I keep a spreadsheet of targets organized by availability so at any time I can get an overview of my options.

I study targets on here and bookmark targets I might want to image.
I live in Bortle 8 so I have to limit to narrowband from home and broadband when i can get to a dark site.

Imaging at the Zenith is a pain for me as I have to take the dome off which is a bit of a palaver (I have a SkyPOD), but will do so if necessary but not as first choice.

Then it is just a matter of short listing the ones I want to do at a given time.

Carole

Lately, I tend to have 2 targets in mind for an evening. I'm typically trying to catch a nebula of some sorts early in the evening until it sets and then i'll flip to something else to capture through the night.

I try not to image broadband when the moon is too bright, but clear nights have been tough to find lately so i'm less picky.

After setting up the custom horizon in Stellarium, its really helpful. Otherwise I check Sky Guide on my iphone which sometimes helps with ideas as well

I go into Telescopius and see what will be up for a reasonable amount of time on the intended night. Telescopius also shows you how far a target will be from the moon.

I'm a huge fan of Stellarium and it's customization capabilities. I have my landscape loaded so I can plan to image from my yard in the forest. Also the DSS sky survey provides enhanced views of DSO objects not normally visible. As I'm shooting two rigs each night it does get a little busy at times as I often have to switch targets due to trees as well as executing a few meridian flips. Determining the start, meridian and end time for shooting each target from my yard is made possible with Stellarium. After doing this for two years now I think I've imaged the really easy targets. The more obscure targets remain and a tool is essential. There are other products that will tell you what is in the sky, but I haven't found one so customizable that my yard in the forest is integrated.

I often get ideas from others that post images here. A quick look in stellarium tells me if it's a target I can image and when. Just imaged the Angel Nebula in January/February following that model. Cheers

I tend to keep a list of potential targets (I mainly do Sharpless in Ha when its 'moony' and LBN/LDN when its not) and use SkyX to decide which month(s) they are best located. I'll then bang them into my NINA sequence sorted by Hour Angle and on the odd clear nightly run using altitude and time constraints.

@Gary Imm has a nice deep-sky compendium on his website :
http://www.garyimm.com/compendium
Just download the spreadsheet, set your Latitude, Longitude and GMT offset.
I regularly use this, there are lots of catalogues and photo's from objects. Also when the object becomes visible at your site.
Clear Skies,
Davy

Start a spreadsheet for targets that you would like to acquire and label them by the month that they are available in the sky from your location. I use Telescopius and Stellarium as you have suggested. I have over 350 on my list and growing every month as I find new targets that I like here on astrobin. I label them by: Month / Name / Type / Size / Filters

I print them out and keep them in a notebook so I can view them and decide what is coming up so I can plan ahead which ones I want next.

Good Luck!
Eddie

The Astrophotography Planner by Charles Bracken 2nd Ed… Is a good inexpensive book that gives the optimal dates by object, it’s not my only resource or method but it helps to not miss good opportunities on objects I didn’t think of, or quickly find one when I’m lazy or don’t have time on an unexpectedly clear night…

Davy Viaene:
@Gary Imm has a nice deep-sky compendium on his website :
http://www.garyimm.com/compendium
Just download the spreadsheet, set your Latitude, Longitude and GMT offset.
I regularly use this, there are lots of catalogues and photo's from objects. Also when the object becomes visible at your site.
Clear Skies,
Davy

Thank you very much, Davy, happy that you are getting some use out of that resource. I hope to update it later this year with the hundreds of new images that I have taken since.

Start a spreadsheet for targets that you would like to acquire and label them by the month that they are available in the sky from your location

I do the same, I've recorded each target by month with a Red-Amber-Green for the month so I have a pretty good visual representation that I can see at a glance.

I have recently upgraded my rig so I am in that lucky position that I don't feel like any target is off limits or over-imaged yet.

For me, I have only a limited amount of sky available to me. So what I do, when there is a clear night, is look at Sky Safari and see what is interesting in the area open to me. Then I change the times and plot out which things will be in my area. Sometimes I end up imaging things I'm not as interested in simply because of lack of choice. Other times I can be fortunate to spend several hours on a single item. I have posted pics with less data than I would prefer but they still look pretty good. I'll be revisiting them this fall, weather permitting, and see about doubling or more.

I use N.I.N.A.s sky catalogue. I know which RA values are good to image from my location and I specify a minimum altitude and time. My main imaging happens from east to south-west (visibility to horizon) which is about 10-12 RA right now. Every month I then change the RA values just as the sky under me changes. Pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Of course there are exceptions to the rule

This should give you an alternative way to the mentioned above.

Just my two cents because my Horizons are high due to topography and trees…. I like to select targets in pairs so I can catch the meridian on both. Of course ths is a gamble on weather as it takes twice as many nights to get each target, but more time is spent with the target high. A mount that can go counterweight up for a while is also helpful in this together with NINA sequence options.
C.S.
Dave

After the Messier Objects & Caldwell Objects, Stephen O'Meara has done 3 additional books in his Deep Sky companion series : The Secret Deep; Hidden Treasures; Southern Gems. Each book has 109 objects (plus a few extra). Sadly all seem to be out of print but the Messier and Caldwell books are easy enough to find. O'Meara also wrote book on the Hershel 400. So plenty of objects to choose from. Thus the issue seems to be which are well placed. Stellarium is great, as others have said, and I use the Ocular tool to see how much of the imaging frame an object will fill.
@CharlesBracken has written, "The Astrophotography Planner" available on Amazon. He maintains a database of 109 objects and if you contact him he will do a pdf file for you, based on your latitude and longitude giving the best time of year to image his 109 objects. I believe the personalised pdf costs US$20. (deepskyprimer@gmail.com). He gave a presentation on it to the iTelescope community https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdeZdu6GXoAwhere he lays out his criteria.. moon phase, elevation and number of potential imaging hours in a night.

Gary imm’s compendium is very useful indeed!
we have had very few cloudless nights last year, a bit demotivating to search for targets. So it’s always last minute work.
I use the asiair tonight best a lot. And of course that compendium.
lately I noticed the good old big paper sky atlas is extremely useful as well!

I already replied earlier about using Astrobin to bookmark images I might want to do in the future.

Additionally, when I go to Bortle 4 campsites, I make up a PDF of all the possible targets at that given time that I want to image. Particularly ones I can't do from home (Bortle 8).

That way i have a ready reference of target, Which equipment to use (widefield), dual rig etc.
Especially some targets which are low in the South i cannot get from home due to a bank of trees in the way.

I normally go with a few other Astrophotographers, so it makes it a social event too. Unfortunately you can't always depend on the wetaher though.

I am going to one in April to hopefully catch some of those Southern targets. (Fingers crossed for the weather)

One of the things I struggle with as well. I have a few options; first off I monitor the basic facebook groups and astrobin and keep a note of interesting objects. So any pics which i find interesting I log them in a personal notebook, and at home I can make a detailed planning when to do what.
Telescopius is furthermore very good, and the 'tonights best' in asiair. The problem is that often objects are very nice, but then the focal length of your OTA is not good enough (or the object too small…)

Via this forum I got the tip of going to Gary Imm excel which seems excellent!

As a last tip: observer pro for the Apple users: you can add a 'clear view' horizon in the app (so add all the trees, and buildings from your local viewpoint) and use that to do a detailed planning of onobstructed view. That can be done as well in stellarium btw.

Hello,

Quite often I will check out https://theskylive.com

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