My situation, is that my backyard has a very narrow view of the sky. I’m trying to find targets within that view.
In telescopius, it lists the altitude, but what “model” is it using? Stellarium has Azimuthal, Equatorial, and Equatorial J2000 as options under the grid lines configuration menu.
I just checked the Crab Nebula and it doesn’t match up. Unless I’m doing something really wrong.
Altitude means “altitude above the horizon”. Use that filter to set the minimum altitude you want the objects to rise above the horizon for you to start seeing/imaging. This is usually set to at least 20-30 degrees to account for atmosphere distortion, but if you have your view blocked higher than this you can use this filter for that too.
If you have a more complex obstruction, you can use the “custom horizon” feature on your Observatory Location. In there, you can set up a custom list of point in AZ ALT format so altitude charts show your blocked views like the following chart:
In there you can see the given object is barely seen between the trees/buildings, even though the altitude line shows it reaches 30 degrees up in the sky.
Finally, you can also limit the search results by filtering by quadrants, in case your blocked view coincides with NW, NE, SE or SW quadrants.
I hope this helps!
