Telescope Reviews: Do you create an observing list before Observing?

Glad somebody posted this as I've been thinking about it. I'm very disorganized. I'm working on the Messiers just because. Probably why its a common beginners list: its teaching me about starhopping, reading charts and seeing. Other than that I really only document so that i can later learn moreinfo about what I've seen , so that's the only point of my lists. Im also curious to see how subsequent sitings will compare to other times. I only have certain views from my house (east some south), so its slow going through the constellations but that in itself is a nice speed to learn. Recently had a point were no other M's were available and I realized I'm wasting a seasons constellations!..so ill write down a couple items from the magazine or here but usually only a couple. Sometimes ill just go off of a couple pages of pocket sky atlas as someone else mentioned. I take my time . It's enjoyable. I mostly use sky safari as my chart and after I've seen an object I add it to a sky safari observing list just to keep track and then transfer/write notes elsewhere. I'm using the sky safari observing list kind of backwards, but due to my priorities it works perfectly that way, to keep track of what I've seen.

The last night out I did something very enjoyable: I started with a typical short goal list of two things : 119 tauri and vesta. Once I found the red star I saw some Messiers I'd seen before and was enjoying those clusters.. I setup the scope and a chair and then just started going through skysafari for objects right next to the last one I'd seen.. I spent a relatively comfortable 3 hours not moving the scope more than an inch or two.. In the cold this turned out to be a great benefit to getting and staying as comfortable as possible. In a couple more weeks Leo will be in a better position for me to knock off those faint messier galaxies and then see what else is visible through my LP. In the meantime ill be hitting the zenith more often

and get this.. With that TWO object list of objects to see I forgot about vesta. Like I said, disorganized.

I do need a better way to keep notes though.. Typing bare fingered is no good in the cold so I write less notes.. I tried bringing out a Bluetooth keyboard for this once and while that was fine things were getting cluttered, decided for now at least, just noting the object and only writing observing notes if something significant or not too cold!