AST205

Observing resources

This folder is for materials related to visual and photographic observations.

A general README on the group activities, including a rubric, is presented here .

Here is a guide to jump starting observing .

The sky at a glance: Sky and Telescope .

Here is a map of good observing locations from the Princeton area. Note that due to constructions, some of the good observing sites are disappearing.

Sports events at Princeton. Some of these may have the side effect of bright lights! Look at home games for soccer, football, played in the evening.

Equipment how-to

Please note the version numbers, in case you have an older version downloaded. We have a few hardcopies of these PDF documents, primarily for the groups who are borrowing the equipment. Some old equipment, just in case: Videos. You MUST view these before observing! Don't expect a blockbuster, but they will be all very useful.

Youtube link Individual videos (the same as on the youtube list):

Weather links for Princeton

On-line planetarium programs

Maps of the Moon

Planet viewers

Here is a nice planet viewer application for Jupiter. This will show the appearance of the planet and its moons.

For observation time, enter the time in EDT + 4 hours (because the time has to be entered in UTC). For example, for October 16 10pm, enter 2014-10-17 02:00:00 in the time box.

For field of view, give 1200 arcseconds. Observatory: you can leave it as the "Earth's center". You can also give Princeton's longitude and latitude. No need to select rings for Jupiter (you won't see them).

Then click "render diagram", and download the PDF. Here is an example for Jupiter, and another one for Saturn (the latter is for our star party, 2014 Sep 17).

Jupiter moon eclipses and occultations. Comes with a good explanation of these events.

Here are the links for all four major outer planets:

Track the moons of planets over time

You can use this to figure out optimal observing times to see a given moon. An example chart of the moons of Saturn over 2 days is shown here .

Finder charts for Uranus and Neptune

Here is a PDF file showing the location of both planets.

Comets

Summary of currently visible comets . There is some hope for this brighter than magnitude 10.

Deep Sky objects

The Messier 45 page refers to nebulosities, galaxies, open and globular clusters. Other resources on the sky and telescope page

Observing logs

These are example observing logs. Your group discussion reports/logs can be of similar format.