Knightware’s Deep Sky Planner 8
One of the many things I learned as a novice astronomer was that if I didn’t have a list of objects to view when I went into the backyard with my telescope, I wouldn’t see much. I’d look at M13 or M42 or a few other bright wonders and end up calling it a night. Fifty years later that hasn’t changed. I still need a list if I hope to see much. And that’s where planning software comes in.
When most beginning observers think about astronomy software, they often envision a program that displays a rendition of the night sky on the computer. These planetarium programs can be attractive, but many of us find observation planning software even more useful.
A planning program is essentially a huge database (many now offering millions of objects) along with tools for searching that database and displaying results in a spreadsheet format as an observing list. There have been numerous planners on the market since the genre became popular, but one of the most established is Knightware’s Deep Sky Planner (DSP), a Windows-only program now in version 8. I gave the software a thorough checkout indoors as well as in the field.
I’ve been using this software, authored by Phyllis Lang, since.
