Look up astronomical objects easily

At this site we have provided a link to the new observing planning tool known as Observarium. Developed by Jerrick Wee, former student at Yale-NUS College, and who has been a research collaborator and now Python full stack developer, the Observarium program presents to students a clean and easy to use interface for selecting objects to observe.

The project is currently still under development, but includes a curated gallery of Deep Sky Objects that includes the full Messier and Caldwell Catalog, as well as selected supernova remnants, galaxies and star clusters that will enable effective use of the Nieves Observatory at Soka University of America with our Astronomy students. Each object is displayed with an image, and a plot of visibility during the night, and types of objects can be selected with more detail about the object provided. The Elevation angle for the object through the night is presented, to enable optimal timing of observations.

For more advanced students and researchers, additional links are provided for selecting extrasolar planets (exoplanets) for observation, as well as eclipsing binary stars. The exoplanets are selected to have bright stars and to be visible from the Nieves Observatory, and the timing of the ingress and egress of the exoplanet transit are provided along with the period of the planet’s orbit.

The Observarium application is available at the link below:

https://observarium.app/