2021 LO2 will swing by my yard during the AM hours of 13 June approaching 1/2 lunar distance. The geometry is somewhat poor from my location in SE Texas and it might be at the limit of both my 13" and 24" from my Bortle 4 skies (magnitude 14-15) when up in dark skies (Moon below horizon). Plus, for me, when brightest and fastest (7.8 arc min/minute), it will be daylight and below the horizon. Use ST4 to check for your location. Best time for me would be 6 UT.

The most successful questions explain what you want to accomplish in general. People often make assumptions in their questions and ask for a new feature or report that a feature doesn't do what they need it to do. It is far better to describe what you are trying to accomplish. Often the solution is there in the software, just not in the way you might imagine.

Example question:

Hello,

I have a long observing list that I want to make shorter because it is taking too long to calculate on the Nightly Planner or Real Time tool. How do I make it shorter?

Answer:

You can create a new list that includes only those objects that you can detect in your telescope. To do that, open the Nightly Planner. Turn off all of the filters. Sort the list by "Best Difficulty" with obvious at the top. Then click in the multiple selection (red check mark) column next to the top object. Scroll down to the last detectable object, hold the shift key, and click in the column next to that object. When you do that, red check marks should be set for all of the objects that are detectable.

Right-click on any red check mark and select "Copy Checked to..." and when the dialog appears, create a new list and complete the copy operation. This will create a list with just the objects that are detectable for your telescope.

You can also apply filters and follow a similar procedure to further narrow down the list, or to create a list meant for a specific night.

Greg it looks to me like the June current data is being loaded into ST3 but it is still being shown as the May data in the notes for the lists.

Just heard there will be a total lunar eclipse before dawn on 26 May 2021. Best visible from western North America into the Pacific Ocean. Just 4° altitude at first contact here in Ohio, so not good for us.

Phil S.

Hi All,

For those fortunate to have a large scope I found that the Apollo asteroid 2021 JG1 will approach within ~100,000 km on the 24th through the 26th of May. It's moving at 117"/min. at the fastest The estimated brightness is 16.4 mag.

The orbital elements are attached below, or you can download the latest elements from the MPC.

Phil S.

Hi All,

For those fortunate to have a large scope & live ~30N or further south I found that the Apollo asteroid 2021 GJ3 will approach within <0.02 AU on the 18th & <0.01 AU on the 19th. It's moving at 35.6"/min. The estimated brightness is 16.6 mag.

Phil S.

Hi Greg,

Are we able, and encouraged, to upload observing lists that we create?

If we are, how do we achieve this?

I have the following lists from handbooks to contribute, mostly for Southern Hemisphere observers really.

Deep Sky Companions - Southern Gems, Stephen O'Meara
Deep Sky Companions - The Secret Deep, Stephen O'Meara
Pearls of the Southern Skies - Dieter Willasch & Auke Slotegraaf
Objects in the Heavens - Peter Birren Naoyuki Kurita

I added Nova Cas 2021 to the Current Bright Novae and Supernovae list. It is mag 7.9.

I'm sure some have heard that the large asteroid, 231937 (2001 FO32)
will pass ~5LD or ~2,013,071Km by our blue planet this weekend. The rock
is said to be ~ 1Km in diameter by some sources but others say 0.55±0.11
km. Anyway, it could be as bright as magnitude 11.6 and moving
~3.5'/min, so easily watched motion. Some sources make it a bit
brighter. The down side is that the windows for observing it are
somewhat small.

On the 19th, it remains fairly low, only getting up to about 20° at
08:00UT during dark time from my location at 30°N.

It's worse in the wee hours of the 20th, loosing a few degrees of
altitude when no moon interference.

The 21st is even worse as it is only up in daylight:-(unless you can
snag it between 5 & 6am CDT!  It should be up 18° at 6am moving 190"/min
near azimuth 150°.

If you wait til 7am, you're well into nautical twilight.

You can use ST4 to generate the ephemeris from your location.

Hello everyone,

The version 4.0j R1 update is now ready. You will be prompted to update when you start SkyTools 4, or you can force the update by clicking the Check For Updates button on the Updates, Registration, and Feedback dialog, accessed via the top level Setup menu.

A lot of work has been done on the Imaging Scheduler and Imaging Database Power Search. I also updated the code that reads filter file data so it is much more forgiving of the data entered, and it offers more useful error messages.

SkyTools 4 Visual users should be aware of a bug found in the Backup/Restore feature. The links to plottable images could be lost when restoring a backup made on another computer. If you have seen this problem, restoring a previous backup will now restore your plottable image links correctly.

There are a lot of minor updates as well. For the list see: https://www.skyhound.com/stupdate4.html