The Astrophotography Planner: Second Edition

As an avid astro-photographer for about 30 years now I am always on the lookout for things that will assist with finding new targets as the seasons progress. I also use the latest equipment and AI assisted programs, so I am not stuck in the past. With the advent of new and more advanced amateur equipment a whole new range of targets has emerged over the years. The author of this book (and his other sky map book) has clearly put in an enormous amount of time and effort to map these things out. Not only that he shows the best times to view them and the amount of data time you will have (depending on the clouds of course). The additional information of how the targets respond to broadband and narrowband filters is of enormous help and will prevent time being wasted trying to acquire data that is simply not to be seen on that particular target. His tips on when to use additional exposure time in certain filters is of particular interest to people like me. I regard this book as essential reading for any astronomer who is interested in taking top-quality images of space targets. I do not say that lightly. You can spend hours trawling through the internet looking for the data you need, or you can just pick up this book and see it all immediately. 5-stars from me.

Excellent reference material. The well presented layout conveys information in charts and maps, together with a short description of important things to consider. Choose a date, check the moon to decide if it's RGB or narrow band time, then quickly browse for a target visible from your latitude. With a clear plan in mind one can then set about creating the sequence of exposures in APT, NINA or other software, to gather sufficient time on target to produce a pleasing image.

Informative book but the index at the back has wrong page numbers - which makes searching for the objects a pain.For example, The North America and Pelican nebulae are on page 77 and not, as the index says, on pages 75, 78 & 81.Every one I've looked at so far is wrong and needs an addendum.