Annual astronomy restart
Sep. 2nd, 2009 07:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnridleySeems like around Labor Day every year I get the scope out again.
This morning I got the scope out but then decided I really needed to start working on my constellations, so I just laid down on the ground with my planisphere and worked on learning some constellations.
The light pollution at our place is getting somewhat bad, especially in the east, but it's good to the north and not horrible to the south. Not nearly as good as it was 10 years ago though. Unfortunately that means that if I do get going on some of my faint object observing programs again, I'll probably have to take the occasional trip down to Lake Hudson. I've been down there 2 or 3 times but it's been years. I have a lot of stuff I can see just fine from home before I have to start going down there though.
I ordered a new piece of observation planning and logging software. This is my third. I started with Sky Tools, then DeepSky, now I've got Deep-Sky Planner coming. Sky Tools was quite capable but the author doesn't ssem to like to use any kind of standards in user interface; nothing works like it does in any other program on any system I've ever used, so if you don't use it all the time, it takes forever to remember how to do anything.
Also, the Sky Tools author seems actively hostile towards the idea of storing or exporting data from his program in any kind of standard format. He actually told me via email once that it was "impossible" to export observing log data in standard XML.
DeepSky was cheap, and was decently capable (not quite so much as Sky Tools, but adequate) but for whatever reason, it really confuses me.
Deep-Sky Planner is at least written by an author who says she is following the Windows Logo certification standards for user interface, and she's part of a working group on exporting observation log data in a standard XML format, so that it can be easily shared for scientific research. So hopefully this one will be worth spending time learning.
This morning I got the scope out but then decided I really needed to start working on my constellations, so I just laid down on the ground with my planisphere and worked on learning some constellations.
The light pollution at our place is getting somewhat bad, especially in the east, but it's good to the north and not horrible to the south. Not nearly as good as it was 10 years ago though. Unfortunately that means that if I do get going on some of my faint object observing programs again, I'll probably have to take the occasional trip down to Lake Hudson. I've been down there 2 or 3 times but it's been years. I have a lot of stuff I can see just fine from home before I have to start going down there though.
I ordered a new piece of observation planning and logging software. This is my third. I started with Sky Tools, then DeepSky, now I've got Deep-Sky Planner coming. Sky Tools was quite capable but the author doesn't ssem to like to use any kind of standards in user interface; nothing works like it does in any other program on any system I've ever used, so if you don't use it all the time, it takes forever to remember how to do anything.
Also, the Sky Tools author seems actively hostile towards the idea of storing or exporting data from his program in any kind of standard format. He actually told me via email once that it was "impossible" to export observing log data in standard XML.
DeepSky was cheap, and was decently capable (not quite so much as Sky Tools, but adequate) but for whatever reason, it really confuses me.
Deep-Sky Planner is at least written by an author who says she is following the Windows Logo certification standards for user interface, and she's part of a working group on exporting observation log data in a standard XML format, so that it can be easily shared for scientific research. So hopefully this one will be worth spending time learning.
