Target Planner

Planning what to shoot and when can be time consuming. If you have one telescope that you use for deep space astrophotography then you probably find yourself swapping the cameras out depending on the target. I do this with my 90mm refractor. I have a one-shot color camera for stars, comets, and galaxies. I also have a monochrome camera and SHO narrow-band filters for nebula targets. Another variable in the rig setup is whether the target is too wide for the 1.0x field flattener. If that is the case then I swap in the 0.8x focal reducer so I can gather as much of the target as possible.

It helps to be able to group a series of similar targets together so you don't have to swap your gear around more often than necessary. The following list allows you to sort by size, name, and a few other attributes. But the best one for planning is the opposition date. This gives you the longest imaging time when you shoot near that date.