5. What should I shoot tonight?

This is not as easy as it sounds, but luckily there are several good online resources for astrophotography planning. Here is what I use.

Telescopius

Let's say, we want to shoot Planetary nebulae tonight. All I need to do to find one appropriate for shooting is to select the fields circled in White. Location is automatically selected by the software as your current location so if needed don't forget to change it.

Object Type: Planetary Nebula

Minimum Duration in the sky: 45 degrees for at least 15 minutes.

Sort by descending order of magnitude since I am looking for the brightest objects

It shows me that Cats Eye Nebula is one of the best to shoot tonight.

Clicking on Cats Eye Nebula then shows me an image of the nebula so that I have an idea of what it looks like...

And finally, if I scroll down on this page, I can frame and see how it would look in my telescope. In this case, it is quite a small object, but a high focal length telescope ( with higher magnification) would do a decent job at it. Circled in White are the telescope focal length and camera sensor details that you can enter.

Sky Guide app

I love this app. You simply point it to the part of the night sky and it shows all objects at the moment from your location in the sky. It also has a card called "Tonight's Best" and it shows you the top objects as seen best tonight through the naked eye, a binocular, and a telescope.

Of course, this is not as comprehensive as Telescopius but it is a for quick check.

This is what we see when we open the app.

Hit the search icon and the bottom to see tonight's best

The Veil Nebula seems like a great target for tonight.

The other cool thing I like about this app is the timelapse of the night sky. Tap on the time icon on the top left and speed up the night sky to see how it moves ( or moves apparently as its not the sky that's moving, it is us that is moving as the earth rotates) throughout the night.

Was that was useful to beginners ?

For expert photographers, which apps do you use?

Would love to see your comments below.