Hi Steve,

I wasn't able to find any help documentation on field descriptor "Best Month". Can you explain what criteria defines a particular month as best?

Along that line, I'm wanting to use CCDNavigator to help me plan a trip to a remote location. What I'd like to do is discover the best times for the trip based on optimal imaging of particular targets.

Things that would be important to me include:
Elevation of the target, Target availability and correspondence to Moon illumination.

It's kind of tedious to do this one month at a time so I'm hoping there's a trick to doing this kind of planning easier.

Thanks,
Jonathan

Hi Jonathan!

"Best Month" is when the target transits closest to the middle of the night. That means it will be at its highest elevation and will be available for the longest time.

If you view the catalogs that interest you, you'll "Best Month" listed. Also you'll notice that some objects do not show a "Best Month". That's because they are never above the horizon at the lat/long for the Site location. So first adjust the Site to the lat/long of the place you're going. All the data in CCDNavigator will be correct for that location including sun and lunar info.

Thanks Steve!

One more question and this one may be dumb; I normally image at 31N degrees but my travel destination is at 19N degrees. I'd like to have an inventory of targets from 5 degrees above the horizon at 19N and below 20 degrees at 31N.

Is there an easy way to do that?

Thank you,
Jonathan

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Jonathan Burnett,

Well the first half is no problem of course, just set up the lat/long for the 19N site and set your Min Elevation to 5 degrees. Then you'll see targets that are visible at that site that reach 5 degs or more.

But the 2nd half, listing targets below 20 degs at 31N is not possible in CCDNavigator.

But here's a way to help think about this. At 31N assume you won't image targets that don't reach 30 degs elevation. That means you never image a target with declination less than -59 degrees never get above your horizon. At 19N, you can see targets down to -71 degs declination.

So targets having declination values from -71 to -59 can be seen from 19N but never from 31N. However this makes no allowance for letting reach a decent elevation for imaging. If you want them to reach at least 30 degs elevation, just add 30 to the range to get -41 to -29 degs declination. Targets in this range will be (in general) ones that are better imaged from 19N.

Hope this helps.

Jonathan:

For determining when objects are best for imaging, I suggest you check out the book "Deep Space Image Catalog" published by Taurus Technologies. It has a series of graphs which display what you want...it's sort of a paper version of CCDNavigator.

I browse through the charts to get a general idea of what is going to be best during a particular month, and then use CCDNavigator/CCDAP4 to make detailed plans.

I appreciate the suggestion Arlo!

Thanks,
Jonathan

Hello,
regarding the BEST Month, is there a possibility to sort the months? I mean to have the list sorted using the month as criteria (January, February, March, etc).
Clear skies
Emil Kolbert

Emil,

Clicking on "Best Month" will sort them alphabetically. Click "Best Month" again to reverse the sort.

But there is no means to sort them by month number (ie. Jan, Feb, Mar, etc).