What’s Up Doc

~~If you are working on an Astronomical League Observing Program, Aaron Clevenson (aaron@clevenson.org) has provided two tools that might be of use to you.  What’s Up Doc? and What’s Up Tonight, Doc? 

The What’s Up Doc is a two page PDF file that is updated each month with information on basic level Observing Programs. It lists those objects that are visible in the evening sky for the next month, by program. These Observing Programs are included:  Meteors, Constellations (Northern), Binocular Messier, Deep Sky Binocular, Messier,  Caldwell, Double Star, Solar System, and Lunar. To access this document, click the What’s Up Doc? link on this web page: www.humbleisd.net/observatory (about halfway down the webpage).

Also on that webpage is a link to the What’s Up Tonight, Doc?  This is a large spreadsheet in Excel (16.5 Mb). It includes all current Astronomical League observing programs. Due to the Macros that are integral to the spreadsheet, this will not run on Apple Macintosh computers. This spreadsheet provide buttons to sort by individual Observing Programs as well as the entire list. The user enters their latitude and longitude and the date and time when they plan to observer (Universal Time). The spreadsheet then provides target objects listed from highest to lowest altitude. There is a column to check off an object once you have observed it (left side) and also columns to include your observing details (right side).

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