Planning Observations
Planning to observe involves many sometimes related factors. Most of these factors
depend on the geographic location of the telescopes to be used so that generally
must be determined first.
- General Information (Site related)
Much information may be available from an observatory's
web site and/or its procedures manual(s) for observers.
- Typical weather
conditions
- Instrument characteristics
- Equipment condition and any service/maintainance plans
- Specific to the Dates Requested/Planned
Look to Almanacs and Ephemerides for
- Sunrise/set; twilight
- Moonrise/set/phase
- Sidereal time at midnight
- Julian Date at midnight
- Specific to the Objects Planned
Selection of specific objects will depend on your goals for observing (reasearch,
pleasure, class project, etc.). There is no one best source for information
and usually you will have to look up or calculate information on an object
by object basis.
Night Plan
When many objects are to be observed during the night, and/or when the objects
must be observed at particular times during the night, a careful night plan
is almost essential.
Useful References
- The Astronomical Almanac (produced annually by the US Naval Observatory
and Her Majesty's Nautical Almanac Office)
- The Observers Handbook (produced annually by the Royal Astronomical Society
of Canada)
- RHO Ephemeris (produced annually by JPO)
- Henden et al., CCD Photometry, April 11, 1999; Ch. 10
- Romanishin, An Introduction to Astronomical Photometry Using CCD's,
August 23, 2000; Ch. 25
Useful Links
Useful Tools
- Sunrise, Sunset, Moonrise, Moonset, and Twilight; moon phase; upcoming eclipses
http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/
- Sky Calander, Almanac, Hour Angle Tables, etc. http://imagiware.com/astro/
- Making finding charts (Digital Sky Survey) http://stdatu.stsci.edu/dss/
- Selecting Objects
The Sommers-Bausch Observatory catalog of Astronomical Objects
http://lyra.colorado.edu/sbo/manuals/sbocatalog/sbocatalog.html
Messier Objects of interest http://www.seds.org/messier/data2.html
Many Sample Images (Messier objects, galaxies, clusters) http://www.astr.ua.edu/choosepic.html
Galaxies: http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Lab/4722/glx.htm
- Planetarium software running on PCs, Macs, and workstations
The Sky is installed on the PCs in rm7
Observatories of Interest
This page is maintained by John
P. Oliver; write me at oliver@astro.ufl.edu
This
material is being made available to you subject to a variety of caveats.
This page was last edited
September 21, 2004 1:38 PM
Techniques
of Observational Astronomy
