Thanks for reading my question.

I agree that if you work with one of the built-in Deepsky catalogs
there are some nice filters available. However, you cannot use most of
those filters on an observing plan, which means that observing plans
are a poor substitute for a catalog. That makes huge lists of objects
such as those found in the Sue French,pln or the DeepMap600.pln
cumbersome to work with at best.

What I want to be able to do is search for all the Sue French objects
that I can see from my deep sky site next Saturday night under the
constraints of my own skills and equipment.

David

On Tue, Jun 30, 2009 at 4:24 AM, <de_miles@...> wrote:
>
>
> David, DeepSky does have the ability to filter out what you want. Go to the
> filter sections and play with the settings, read the help files. I have
> several saved queries that I use to filter out all but the brighter objects,
>  that works good in my light polluted area. There is also some pre built
> queries under the query tab at the top of the screen. I use and prefer the
> Saguaro Astronomy Club V7.5 database since they list mag2 (surface
> brightness) for most objects then you can use that in the filtering. Hope
> this helps.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "David Finlayson" <david.p.finlayson@...>
> To: deepskysoftware@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Monday, June 29, 2009 11:34:58 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
> Subject: [deepskysoftware] Re: Convert plan to catalog?
>
>
>
> It seems to go against the grain of the program to make an observing list of
> hundreds of objects; though lots of people are doing it if you look through
> the Files section here. You can't really filter them for what's up tonight,
> or limit the magnitude for objects unsuitable for a given observing site. A
> list that large is a catalog and it would be nice to have the full filter
> and search capabilities available for catalogs of my own creation.
>
> I'm new to the program, so maybe I missed something. But, if you can't do it
> with this version of the program, you might consider that for the next. That
> way we users can build up a body of interesting catalogs associated with our
> favorite subjects: carbon stars, doubles with strong color contrasts, the
> complete catalog of Burham's Celestial Handbook, etc.
>
> David
>
> --- In deepskysoftware@yahoogroups.com, "stuma2001" <stuma@...> wrote:
>>
>> Why would you want to do that? An observing plan is simply links to
>> existing objects in one or more catalogs already. The database I use is
>> Microsoft Access so if you have Access you could always create your own that
>> way, but I'd caution you on doing that because if you mess up the data,
>> Deepsky may not work properly.
>>
>> Please tell me more about why you are wanting to do this?
>>
>> Steve
>>
>>
>> --- In deepskysoftware@yahoogroups.com, "David Finlayson"
>> <david.p.finlayson@> wrote:
>> >
>> > Is there an easy way to convert an observing plan into a catalog?
>> >
>>
>
>

--
David Finlayson, Ph.D.
Operational Geologist

U.S. Geological Survey
Pacific Science Center
400 Natural Bridges Drive
Santa Cruz, CA 95060, USA

Office: 831-427-4757
Lab: 831-427-4462
Fax: 831-427-4748
E-mail: dfinlayson@...