What is Observation?
Observation is a tool to help amateur astronomers record observation logs in the field.
View a graphical representation of the current Clear Sky Chart for nearby locations. Find the object you're observing in the NGC/IC or the Hipparcos catalog. Create custom objects at the time of observation if you see something new. Create custom equipment for selection when making an observation.
Observation will use all of this information to help you log your night out under the stars. Spend more of your time looking up, rather than down at a logbook.
What it's not: Observation is not a planetarium. The iPhone already has a number of excellent planetarium applications. Pocket Universe (iTunes) is particularly good.
What's New?
- Version 1.5
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This is a maintenance release that improves performance and stability.
- Fixed CSV export formatting bugs.
- Fixed bugs related to Conditions data fetching errors.
- Modified Seeing/Transparency reporting.
- Version 1.4
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This is a maintenance release that improves performance and stability.
- Fixed various bugs related location services that could cause crashes.
- Specifically fixed a crash when location services are disabled on iPod Touch.
- Version 1.3
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Log Entry Fields: Fields Observation automatically fills in can now be changed from their automatic defaults. This includes the date, longitude & latitude, seeing, and transparency fields.
- Fixed a crash on launch when location services are enabled.
- Fixed a bug related to log entry notes and scrolling.
- Version 1.2
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This is a maintenance release that improves performance and stability.
- Substantial changes to Conditions data processing and location information handling. This should fix some crashes related to the Conditions tab and should improve performance of the Conditions tab.
- Integrated PLCrashReporter. If the app crashes, you'll now see an alert the next time you run it asking if you wish to submit crash data back to Water-Powered Ideas anonymously. We highly recommend you do so.
- Fixed issues with custom location coordinate parsing and added support for colon-separated values (DD:MM:SS)
- Version 1.1
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Custom Location: Use the phone's current location... or don't. Observation will allow you to enter custom coordinates in one of three accepted formats instead of using the device's current coordinates. This will be used to select nearby Clear Sky Charts and will be stored in Log Entries.
- Red Tint option renamed to Night Mode
- Better location error reporting and handling
- Fixed Conditions-related bugs that could cause stability problems.
Current Conditions & Forecast
Select from a nearby Clear Sky Chart and see more than just the temperature and cloud cover forecast. Observation will show you both the seeing and transparency at the given site with hourly forecasts up to 8 hours into the future.
Seeing: Observation uses the scale above to quantify the steadiness or turbulence of the atmosphere and presents it graphically.
Transparency: Observation also uses the scale above to quantify the transparency of the atmosphere and present it graphically.
Log Entries
Observation is designed to make recording observations on your phone in the field as easy as possible. All information that can be filled in for you automatically is, and things like equipment can be defined and then selected for any log entries you make.
Export Your Logs: Observation will allow you to email your log entries in CSV format to yourself, your friends, or anyone. This allows you to keep a backup copy of your lot entries outside of Observation and off your phone aside from the standard iPhone backup.
Automatic Fields: The date and time of the observation, your current GPS coordinates, as well as the seeing and transparency conditions read from your selected Clear Sky Chart are all filled in for you. Once you select an object, its RA, declination, and magnitude will be shown in the entry. The equipment used to make the observation can be selected from your list of equipment. You may also enter an observed RA, declination, and magnitude for the object, as well as any notes you may have.
Objects
Observation includes all objects from the NGC 2000.0 catalog and a portion of the Hipparcos catalog to provide tens of thousands of objects already available for logging. Additionally you may define your own objects as needed. The Observation object catalog allows for searching your custom objects, catalog objects, or both to find what you're looking at.
Equipment
Observation allows you to enter all of your equipment in order to quickly add it to a log entry. Included are 8 common equipment types with easy to recognize icons so you may browse quickly through a large list of equipment to find what you're looking for. You may also search the equipment list by name.
Other Features
Night Mode: The entire application can be tinted red for ease of use when dark-adapted. While the tinting is not perfect due to limitations in the iPhone SDK, it provides functional relief to dark-adapted eyes.
Custom Location: Use the phone's current location... or don't. Observation will allow you to enter custom coordinates in one of three accepted formats instead of using the device's current coordinates. This will be used to select nearby Clear Sky Charts and will be stored in Log Entries.
Export Your Logs: Observation will allow you to email your log entries in CSV format to yourself, your friends, or anyone. This allows you to keep a backup copy of your lot entries outside of Observation and off your phone aside from the standard iPhone backup.
Frequently Asked Questions
- Why is Observation only available in the US and Canada?
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The primary source for Conditions data is the Clear Sky Chart, which in turn gets its data from the Canadian Meteorological Centre who only cover North America in their forecasts. Because this data is not available for users outside of North America, Observation would lack seeing and transparency forecasts. Without it, Observation's forecasts are less detailed than those available from other applications and a large part of the auto-filled data in log entries would be missing.
Observation Lite, however, is available outside of North America. It provides the log entry functionality of Observation without conditions information.