The CCD Guide 2024 is now available. Every year since 1997, the Astronomischer Arbeitskreis Salzkammergut astronomy club in Austria has published the CCD-Guide, which assists astrophotographers in planning their imaging projects.
Besides a huge number of reference images, the CCD-Guide contains software to find images, to view images and to obtain all necessary data. The newest release offers 472 new astrophotos and considerable software enhancements. The entire collection contains more than 5,000 reference images of more than 1300 objects from 58 contributing astrophotographers. CCD-Guide can be run immediately on all common Windows computers (Windows 10 or higher) without installation.
The CCD Guide 2024 offers a powerful planning tool named ObjectTracker, which quickly and easily answers the question of whether a particular object can be photographed at a selected location on a particular night. The ideal time window for taking photographs is calculated by taking into account including twilight, Moon, object altitude and optional horizon. The altitude progression of the object and of the Moon is displayed in an intuitive graphic.
The CCD Guide Browser enables access to all images in the image database and to all object data in the object database. In ImageBrowser mode, a preview image as well as the object and recording data are displayed for each recording. Double-clicking on the preview image opens the ObjectViewer image viewing software with which the images can not only be viewed but also analyzed in detail because almost all deepsky astrophotos are solved astrometrically.
The very large number of image data sets or object data sets can easily be reduced to a manageable number by using filters. The images can be restricted according to object-related criteria such as coordinates, object type or object size, as well as image-related criteria such as photographer, camera, telescope or date. This makes very complex search queries possible and the result of the filtering can be viewed in a slideshow in full-screen mode.
Features of the CCD Guide 2024 software include:
– Extensive deep sky object database including object data, based on 30 big standard catalogues.
– Easy search function for objects.
– Simultaneous viewing of object data, image acquisition data and preview picture.
– Filter the images by different criteria, e.g. coordinates, object type, object size, constellation, catalogue, observer, camera, telescope or date.
– Create a slide show of selected images.
– Input your own images including data to create your personal image archive.
– Observation planning for astrophotographers including calculation of the ideal observation window considering object height, Sun, Moon and local horizon.
CCD-Guide team members work voluntary and all income is used exclusively to cover production costs or to support projects of the Astronomischer Arbeitskreis Salzkammergut astronomy club.
You can order the new CCD-Guide 2024 at a price of 29€ for the download. All users of previous CCD-Guide versions can buy an update for the new release at 19€. Students can receive the CCD guide free of charge for their pre-scientific work and projects.
Order information about the CCD Guide 2023 is available here.
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The Sun is more active than it’s been in years and if that’s not enough, we have the upcoming Total Solar Eclipse on April 8, 2024! If you’d like to learn more about the technology behind solar observing, solar imaging and more, you can check out our new monthly magazine – Solar Astronomy Today. It’s free to read, no subscription needed and available here. And if you are preparing for the upcoming eclipses and want to know your equipment options from solar glasses to the most out of this world solar viewing and imaging options, check out our free publication – The Definitive Guide to Viewing and Imaging the Sun – simply click here and enjoy reading!