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| I’m curious if any of you have any “go to” references for identifying potential astrophotography targets. I mainly use Stellarium and basically “wander” around the sky to find things to shoot, but it seems I’m missing out on a lot of potential targets that way. I also keep an eye on what others are shooting, and sometimes wonder how they found their targets. Books? Telescopius.com? Others? |
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| The AstroImaging channel just did a show about scheduling in NINA. There are also apps like Astrolpanner and Skytools. Telescopius is good, too. A combo platter! |
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| I liked Ruben Kier's The 100 Best Astrophotography Targets. It's from Springer Verlag ©2009. |
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Dave Ek: ^ |
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Messier objects are always good targets. They are all over the sky, and can be imaged pretty much any time of the year. Looking at Astrobin and bookmarking interesting pictures is also a good way to create your own target list. You can keep adding targets to your list when it's cloudy, and soon you will have plenty of targets any time around the year. If you photograph in dark places, constantly taking deep images using standard (50mm) or telephoto (85-200mm) lenses can also help you to spot interesting and rarely imaged objects. Such pictures themselves can be pretty. After you remove the stars you can see fainter deep-sky objects for closeup imaging. |
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I have this sky atlas book: https://www.amazon.com/Astrophotography-Sky-Atlas-Charles-Bracken/dp/1517687802/ref=sr_1_6?crid=3PRHQ89Q3G4W&keywords=astro+sky+atlas&qid=1694488743&sprefix=astro+sky+atla%2Caps%2C153&sr=8-6 I plan to use it to choose my first targets. It contains these:
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I have this sky atlas book: https://www.amazon.com/Astrophotography-Sky-Atlas-Charles-Bracken/dp/1517687802/ref=sr_1_6?crid=3PRHQ89Q3G4W&keywords=astro+sky+atlas&qid=1694488743&sprefix=astro+sky+atla%2Caps%2C153&sr=8-6 I was wondering how good the Bracken book was. Thanks for providing all the detail. I think I’ll get that. |
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Wei-Hao Wang: All good suggestions. Of course the Messier catalog is always a good source. I hadn’t thought of doing my own “sky survey” with a wide field lens. |
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Telescopius is my go to. It's free but I like it so much that I donate $5 a month. You can set up observing lists (I have one for each month and a "next time out" list. You can browse and sort by many different criteria. For example, galaxies that are larger than 10 arc minutes, sorted by next opposition date. You can also import your images from astrobin into their gallery. I can't recommend it enough. Give it a look. Clear skies, Bill Almost forgot the best feature.. The framing assistant. Very valuable tool.. |
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| Yeah, Telescopius is great, and I also like to slew around in Stellarium with the DSS enabled. You can find some nifty things that are not covered by the books. |
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| I usually browse the photo stream here to see if anything peaks my interest. But one of my favorite ways to find interesting targets is to browse Microsofts WorldWide Telescope instead of stellarium. Make sure you have selected "digitized sky survey in color" as your imagery source, surf the sky, zoom in and right click a target you like to find a catalogue reference, coordinate or star that you can plug into your imaging acquisition preference (for me asiair). I find stellarium does not show a lot of faint or less popular targets and is finicky with getting it to select and identify an object. |
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I use - Stellarium App mostly for description and data on objects for its broadest database on objects and descriptions - but thin on marked up objects but find them best in - Sykguide app for visual search in Ha clouds, but very poor data on objects and incomplete database - SkyTonight App for search for marked DSO objects, but too few available - Planetarium App for broadest markup of DSO objects, but thin on description Arny |
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I also use Telescopius and can nothing but recommend it. This is a great website dedicate to astrophotography planning. - you filter targets according to target type, magnitude, size, position in skies. - it allows you to know at what time the object is to be seen best, or at which period in the year. - it allows you to simulate your field of view - it allows you to plan mosaic and to export the panel coordinates as a CSV file that can be fed to NINA or APT - it provides many additional tools such as various calculatrs. Stellarium is great complement. But for planning, telescopius is great. https://telescopius.com/deep-sky/search CS Patrice |
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I actually use Astrobin. I enter my camera and lens and see what other people are shooting with the same gear. I can then compare my results to see what improvements I can make to imaging or processing. Telescopius is great for working out a plan once you have an idea of a target, but is also useful if you just have no idea. Easy to find out what you can shoot and when that night. Once I have my target I then jump into Stellarium for a bit more detail. Hope that helps :-) J |
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All mentioned before are great resources but I feel are missing a very large and obvious one. Here at Astrobin! Use the advanced search feature and limit the acquisition date range to the month you are interested in from a single year. You can easily do that for a couple recent years and be amazed at the ideas that show up. Then take your ideas to whatever other programs you use to see what fits your gear and observing site best. CS, Jeff |
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| Astrobin is the best place where you can find fine objects to shoot at! you can also try Nina framing assistant with offline sky atlas enabked. From here you can frame targets and save the sequence for later use. I have a shared folder between my imaging pc and my home pc where I put all the scheduled targets so I can prepare my sequences even if my imaging pc is turned off. |
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| A mix of telescopius, stellarium, and seeing what people are posting on here. |
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| One other thing...I have done several of the Astronomical League's observation projects for the Moon, planetary nebulae, globular clusters, the Arp galaxies, etc. I like to submit images instead of a drawing or written description. Many of the targets are too small to be worth photographing (except for the project itself), but I've found many others that have been excellent targets that you don't see photographed very often. The League has lists of these targets, often in spreadsheet form, that you can sort by target size, right ascension, or brightness. |
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Surprised no one has mentioned Gary Imm's epic Deep Sky Compendium yet... https://www.astrobin.com/xifpi9 |
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As many have said above. I bookmark images on Astrobin that I think I would like to do and come back to them later when the time is right. Carole |
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I have this sky atlas book: https://www.amazon.com/Astrophotography-Sky-Atlas-Charles-Bracken/dp/1517687802/ref=sr_1_6?crid=3PRHQ89Q3G4W&keywords=astro+sky+atlas&qid=1694488743&sprefix=astro+sky+atla%2Caps%2C153&sr=8-6 I'll second this recommendation. Charles book is great and my go to source. I use it in combination with Telescopius... |
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I use all of the above but another common source of targets comes from my bookmarked list of images here on AB. Whenever I spot an image that I might want to shoot taken from a similar location (S. Hemisphere) and with similar FOV as one of my scopes in Chile, I bookmark it for further consideration. I’ve suggested to Salvatore that AB should have a dedicated “target finder” function. AB has to contain the world’s largest collection of astro-images so all it would take is a good search engine to sort between rising time/meridian crossing, FOV, NB/Broadband, object type, etc. An important part of the search would be to present the best images on top of the list of returned objects. In fact, that’s a function that I’d like to see implemented in the existing search engine. It is just too hard to sort through all the really crummy images to find the best stuff! It might take a little effort to refine a really useful “target finder” but I think that it would be an extremely valuable feature. John |
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I use "The Astrophotography Planner: Second Edition" by Charles Bracken - great resource as it quickly tells you which targets are right now in the optimal position on the sky to image. I've been also using Astroplanner app, which is great too, but sometimes gives just too much information  .
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Surprised no one has mentioned Gary Imm's epic Deep Sky Compendium yet... I use Gary Imm's powerful excel file that allow me to search object without internet. It also shows recommend focal length and filters. |
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| Thanks all for your suggestions! Definitely some recurring themes here in the responses. I’ll check them all out. |
