I had been observing the night sky with my binoculars for a while now, and I wanted to start maintaining a logbook. But I have no idea on what to include in the logbook. Can anybody help me with this?
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It’s great that you want to maintain a logbook! An observation log might be seen by people other than you as well. Therefore, it is better to include all relevant information to avoid any ambiguity. These are the fields that are usually present in logs:
- Date and Time
- Location(and an approximate Bortle scale class for that location)
- Equipment details - In the case of a binocular, you can probably just write something like
Olympus 10x50but if it’s a telescope, you will have to include the aperture, focal ratio and effective magnification. I would recommend including the eyepiece used and other accessories like barlow, filters, etc. as well. - A description field where you try to describe what the object looks, how you reached that object by starhopping, etc.
- A sketch of the Field Of View(FOV). There are some people who do this very seriously and some just make very approximate sketches. It’s really up to you.
A lot of sites have templates for these log sheets available that you can use. Here is one from astronomy.com.
Clear skies! Hope to seeing your observation logs posted here some day.
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Sure, and thanks for the much needed information.