New free tool: DSO Browser

[sebagr]

Hi!

I've been reading you guys for a while now but never posted anything. I think this is my first post so, hi!

I just wanted to share with you a free tool I've made, called DSO Browser: http://dso-browser.com

It allows you to answer questions like "Which DSOs can I see from my lat/long, 8th magnitude or less, between 8 pm and 4 am, reaching 45 degrees above the horizon for at least 2 hours?"

That's one of the key things: to be able to specify a minimum altitude and time above that altitude, very useful for astrophotography but observational as well.

It has several features, such as auto-location, find objects by type (Galaxy, Nebula, etc), apparent magnitude and size, minimum altitude, etc. Just bear in mind that any filters you set will restrict the search more and more, so leave some options empty if you're not sure what you're looking for.

Also, when you see any object's details you'll see a Google Sky Map embed showing the actual stuff plus nearby object for you to actually browse the sky jumping from object to object, getting details, the best time of the year to see each DSO from your location, etc.

At the bottom of the page there's a contact form you can use to let me know your suggestions. I'm planning to include more features, but I believe I managed to get a decent enough version to share with you so those who wanted to use it could benefit from it.

Please note: this is not an exact application, just approximate enough to help in your observation/astrophotography sessions, so don't expect 'surgical precision' in the calculations :)

Hope you like it, I look forward to your comments!

Clear skies,

Sebastian

[Octane]

Sebastian,

This is fabulous. Great to see an online version of some tools/applications we typically do own that show the same type of information.

Great site. : )

H

[TrevorW]

very well done will come in handy

[glenc]

Excellent work Sebastian!
Thanks

[Ro84]

Wonderful! And very useful for all the data included.

[Steffen]

Yes, this is great, bookmarked!

I've got one small suggestion - could you adjust the width of the drop-down lists, some seem too narrow to display the selected value. See my screenshot, I entered 151 for longitude and +10 for timezone.

Cheers
Steffen.

[sebagr]

Hi guys,

Thanks for all your comments, I'm glad you like it! Keep checking it, I expect to have more cool features over the next months - including some levels of personalization, get reminders emailed for your favorite objects, adding personal notes, etc.

@Steffen: thanks for pointing that out; I've had some problems with that particular item (too many pulldowns for such a small box). I think I'll ditch those 'min' and 'sec' and replace them with just ' and '' so there's more room for the combos.

Thanks again!

Clear skies,

Sebastian.

[Bassnut]

wow, this is a great tool for planning, excellent !.

[cfranks]

I have wanted this kind of info for a long time. Thanks and congratulations.
Any chance of printing more than one page at a time when I press the Print button?

Charles

[sebagr]

Hey Charles,

There's no way to print something that's not in the page (kind of...), but you can change the results settings (bottom right box in the filters section) to have up to 100 results per request. That should give you about 5 A4 pages per request.

Note I'm limiting the results to 100 per page to minimize the server load, but I'll probably change that limit to 200 now that you mention this.

Thanks!

[Steffen]

Good idea, it would also make it consistent with the º display for degrees. That said, for a "what's up" list you don't really need down to the second accuracy for latitude and longitude, so you could ditch seconds altogether.

Cheers
Steffen.

[sebagr]

Indeed! That'd mean a neater box as well... ok, I'll think about it for the next version in the next week or two.

Thanks!

[Lester]

Fantastic program, thanks Sebastian. All the best.