The Astrophotography Planner: 2020-2021 Edition

A very good book for planning your astrophotography session. I removed one star because the book was probably hastily placed in a pouch causing creases in the corners of the book.

Be aware of no pics in the book . But it has alot of detailed info

Excellent book to use with planning astrophotography trips.Very Well detailed.I hope that the author will revise this edition in a couple more years.

This is very handy guide for folks getting into the astrophotography and video astronomy hobby. The author provides his top 76 photographic targets (some of which contain multiple deep space objects) of the northern hemisphere night sky along with descriptions and the important information to let you know if/when you should image them. The objects are listed in order of best imaging time of the year, making it easy to select some potential targets.My workflow to narrow down the potential targets to 1 or 2 for an evening is to first look at the declination angle to make sure the object isn’t too low on the horizon to be blocked from my backyard. Next I use the object size information to see how that matches up with my telescopes FOV. Note that the star charts and descriptions provide additional information for related objects to better frame the shot based on your actual FOV. My imaging nights are usually dictated by clouds and moon – so I usually pick an imaging night based on these. Figures are provided to show moonless hours for every night of 2020-2021. Other figures show target rise and set times as well as the meridian crossing time and others the number of quality imaging hours by date. Based on this information it is pretty straightforward to select appropriate targets at times that they are high in the sky for best imaging during moonless hours.I watched a video of the author, where he stated that he can provide an alternative version of this work, tailored to your specific location, via .pdf file for the same cost. This might even streamline the workflow; it would be interesting to compare the two versions.I do most of my imaging at a very long 2350mm focal length, capturing small targets or small features within large targets. Here is a shot of the Horsehead Nebula that I selected to image in late December based on this guide.

When I ordered the book, I was thinking it will have photos of deep sky objects. But there are no photos but graphs and sky map for objects. Which initially I thought was waste of money - and then I read the book and how to use the graph and man I was wrong. Very valuable book. Also, best part I like is that maps are drawn on same scale so if you know focal length and sensor size of your camera, you can figure out how big the object will be (helps you avoid targets which are too small for your setup). Overall, excellent book. Must have if you are into astrophotography.

Doesn’t have images but it a resource to tell you what is visible for each month so you can plan your equipment (proper focal length, filters to use, etc)