Deep-Sky Visibility Indicator [alleen engels]
DVI or Deep-Sky Visibility Indicator 1.4 is a tool that helps the observer to determine if a deep-sky object will be visible through the eyepiece with a given telescope and night-sky conditions. Next to this the tool will also give you the optimum detection magnification for the selected object.
Deep-Sky Visibility Indicator - Release 1.4
What can be more frustrating, for a beginner amateur astronomer, then going out in the dark cold night with your telescope , making sure the scope is properly aligned or if you have a GoTo it is properly initialized, only to discover that you can't get any sight of the first few objects you are trying to observe. This is what frequently happened to me about 20 years ago when I went out for a night observing with my 80mm refractor. Now that I just finished building my 12” computerized Dob (using Mel Bartels system to computerize it), and reading some articles about the visibility, I thought it would be handy to have an easy-to-use tool that at least would give me some indication about the visibility of those objects.
That is how my Deep-Sky Visibility Indicator project has started. I had to read a lot more about deep-sky visibility. For the insiders: even digging up “Blackwells” original article about “Contrast Thresholds of the Human Eye” dated back from 1946. Learning more about the Sky Background Brightness, Limiting Visibility and back-tracking some of the debate going on around this topic over the last few years. Thanks to the help of Jan van Gastel I think I more or less mastered it.
After finishing release 1.3 more features where added. In release 1.4 the following features were added:
- Administer the objects you have observed in the database,
- Create, show and print finder-charts,
- Show and print images of the objects.
Some highlight features:
- It contains 9 catalogues [Messier, Caldwell, NGC, IC, ARP, Herschel400, UGC, Abell Planetaries, and BOC (Bright Object Catalogue from www.AstroForum.nl)].
- It contains a database of over more than 28,000 Deep-Sky objects
- It allows you to view a selected object on-line on www.Sky-Map.org and get a view from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
- Create and manage observation lists, and optimizing the routing of your observation list.
- Import data from other tools
- Automatically generate Scroll-Files [for the folks using Mel Bartels system].
Anybody can freely use the tool.
DVI 1.4 WILL ONLY RUN UNDER EXCEL2007 OR HIGHER
BEFORE OPENING THE EXCEL FILE PLEASE READ INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS IN THE MANUAL FIRST!
AFTER DOWNLOADING THE ZIP FILE, FIRST UNPACK ALL FILES TO A SEPERATE DIRECTORY!
Download manual only - push HERE
Download full package including manual - push HERE
