This is to announce a website containing my personal observing list and planning spreadsheet of about 3,100 objects implemented in MS-Excel (13.1Mb). members.csolutions.net/fisherka/astronote/plan/ObSpdht/ObSpdhtProject.html The spreadsheet contains an observing list of approximately 3,100 deep sky objects and regions which can be sorted and filtered by whether they are currently visible in the observer's local horizon system. This deep sky object ("DSO") observing spreadsheet will be of interest to instructors of introductory college astronomy courses, astronomy club lunar party organizers, and intermediate and beginner observers. By using the full power of Excel's drill-down data filter feature, a variety of interesting DSO tours can be developed, e.g. - by open cluster age, by bright star MK spectral class, by binary star separation, by galaxy type, by Milky Way structure association, etc. For beginners, purchasing a commercial observation planner product like Astroplanner software by Paul Rodham (iLanga, Inc.) is a better alternative. To observe the efficiently is dependent on having a good catalogue of interesting objects and the ability to determine the current location of objects above the observer's local horizon by object type. Typically, this may involve reviewing several books and guides for appropriate targets applicable to a particular night, such as Burnham's, Harrington's Touring the Universe with Binoculars, Mullaney's Celestial Harvest, or Peterson's Field Guide to the Stars and Planets, just to name few options. Finding the right targets is confounded by the repetitous designations. For example, if you have done Messier's catalogue and Caldwell's list, you have also covered about 40% of the Herschel 400. It was felt that a single consolidated life-time list would allow for a quick after-work selection of two or three targets in order to maximize the amount of time spent at the eyepiece. Several popular guides were reviewed for showcase item lists. These included Clark, Herschel 400, Barnard, Caldwell, Messier, Burhnam's, and Harrington's TUBA. A consolidated non-duplicative list of approximately 1,200 DSO objects was created from these lists. Supplemental items were added according to the author's interest and personal knowledge. For double stars and multiple star systems, the 6th Orbit Catalogue and the UNSO Selected 2006 Double Stars from the online Astronomical Almanac were used as the base. This base list was supplemented with non-duplicative objects from the sources source as the Belmont Society Colorful Double Star List. A total of approximately 450 doubles are included in the spreadsheet. For variable stars, The AAVSO master catalogue ("united.txt") filtered for selected stars with a period of less than 14 days was used as the base list. This intentionally biased catalogue variables towards short-period variables instead of the usual focal on long-period variables. This bias was incorporated into the catalogue on the assumption that beginning variable star observers would like to observe stars that will change over the course of an evening, two evenings or a week. Inspired by short-period observing, such beginners may move onto traditional long-period variable observing - where changes occur over months. The variable base list was supplemented with non-duplicative objects easy long-period variable lists. A full description of the source catalogues and resulting distribution of objects by type, size and magnitude can be found at the project homepage. Utilities are include to select an observing list and translate the selected list into an HTML document for sharing over the internet. Many beginner and intermediate astromath utilities are included like computing equivalent astrophoto exposures, apparent magnitude and distance, image scaling, the half-angle formula, and Kelper's Third law. A bibliography of approx. 770 items concerning observing, object catalogues, Milky Way structure, and the history of astronomy is included. For a related project - this author's 2,500 lunar target planning spreadsheet in MS Excel - see: http://members.csolutions.net/fisherka/astronote/plan/MoonPlan/MoonSpdtProje... - Canopus56 __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com