How do you keep track of what you've photographed?

[RugbyRene (Rene)]

Hi all,

As it's a wet day here in Sydney I was going through the data on my previous targets, and I started to wonder how I could keep track of all of my astrophotography sessions. You know, what, when, where how many subs etc.

It occurred to me that after a while the amount of data we capture can get quite large and I would like a way to track it all. I thought of putting it all in a spreadsheet but was wondering what other people use?

Rene

[Leo.G (Leo)]

I used to try and use just one hard drive for all of my data, that idea crashed when my old system became redundant. I should be using a server with dedicated disk shelf which my son has (HP C7000 blade cabinet with 16 individual blade servers) but that got expensive to run and we haven't turned either on for some time. Now I just have stuff spread across multiple hard drives (around 14TB of hard drive capacity in 2TB drives. Luckily for me I have a crappy memory and have no idea where anything is now.


My main practise used to be memory card dumps onto a specific drive placed in aptly name folders. The individual frames have times in the data so I know which exposure time was used. I believe most people now use the cloud but I don't like the cloud (or the stuff outside which looks like it will still be around tomorrow when I want to look for the devils comet).

[glend (Glen)]

For visual astronomy I used to use the checklist in the back of the Southern Gems book, much of which i worked through over the years. That book provided both a reference for each object, as well as a record keeping index of my observations.

For imaging, I kept an A4 notebook with details of each shoot, and those note eventually found their way into the Technical details provided for each of my images loaded into my Astrobin Gallery. Astrobin is a good place to summerise and share your efforts in producing an image. Details can be as precise or as vague as you choose. And it's always there to go back to.

[Startrek (Martin)]

Are you referring to an efficient Windows filing system of directories ( folders and files ) on your desktop or laptop for easy access to particular data ?

If so, I can show you how mine is set up ?

Martin

PS I assume your not talking about a paid Astrophotography hosting platform like Astrobin , which I’m a member of or a cloud storage service like drop box ? These are mainly for your final images