Astronomy Hacks

Develop an Organized Logging System

Apply accounting techniques to keep track of your observations. Record it once, and you can use it forever.

Accounting records are organized in two ways. A journal records transaction details chronologically as they occur, like your checkbook register. Those transactions are later transferred to a ledger, which organizes the data into categories, such as salary income, rent payments, and so on.

Well-organized astronomers use a similar method for keeping their observing records. The log sheets you fill out during observing sessions are journals because they record transactions chronologically. Periodically, you should transfer those records to a consolidated ledger. A spreadsheet is the ideal tool for creating a ledger because it allows you to sort your observations according to different criteria. For example, if you’re “constellation sweeping” in Cassiopeia and want to know which objects you’ve already observed there, it takes only seconds to sort your ledger by constellation. Similarly, if you’re pursuing globular clusters, for example, it’s easy to sort your ledger by object type and then NGC number to provide a list in NGC order of globs you’ve already observed.

Figure 2-31 shows an excerpt from Barbara’s observing ledger, sorted first on the “D” column and then on the NGC/IC column to provide a list of the objects by NGC/IC number that she’s observed on the Astronomical League Deep-Sky Binocular (D) list. (This is from an old copy of her ...