Gaps in the NGC Catalogue for the GoTO Catalogue Target/Co-ordinates tool

[HawaiianHaole]

I was just about to post about this. My only difference is that I exclusively use the push to assistant to find and center targets. I don’t think I’ve taken the caps off my finder scope since the push to feature has come out. I’ve never had a need to since it came out. I want to thank you personally. It has made the biggest improvement in my overall enjoyment of astronomy.

Some targets though aren’t listed as stated above. I sometimes get lucky by looking up the coordinates from Stellarium and then manually enter them in the field provided. Sometimes not. While the plate solves fine for the all the manually imputed coordinates, after stacking to verify target I either see no target or it’s off close to the edge of the frame. I use the asi294mc pro so I get a fairly wide fov. I still can’t find NGC 278 in the catalog or through manual input. A couple nights ago I found the rosé galaxy ARP 273 (UGC1810 & UGC1813) by inputting the coordinates manually, but was almost out of frame. I usually get to around.02°-.04°in az and alt before I start live stacking. At this tolerance, every target selected out of the full catalog search within sharpcap ends up with the target perfectly centered in the frame. Is there a place to find these coordinates to targets not listed in sharpcaps catalog that will give me the same accuracy manually inputted as it does for the ones sharpcap already has cataloged? I use a manual 10” dob on a homemade, but accurate Eq platform.

[admin]

Hi,

there is a thread somewhere on Cloudy Nights where people were building and sharing custom catalog data for use in SharpCap - see this thread for instance, which seems to include a link for an ARP catalog : https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/8564 ... -annotate/

Remember to check that the co-ordinates you use are in J2000 format - SharpCap expects all catalog co-ordinates and co-ordinates entered to be J2000 and will convert automatically to JNOW as required.

For ARP273 specifically, Wikipedia seems to have a full set of J2000 co-ordinates with precision of fractional arc seconds - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arp_273 - I presume the values are accurate as well as precise, but haven't checked.

cheers,

Robin

[HawaiianHaole]

Thanks Robin. I will give that a try.