Resources: Telescopius, Stellarium

Before you can decide which object you want to study, you have to determine what is actually visible tonight in the night sky!  This can be done using Telescopius.

Adjusting your Observatory Settings in Telescopius:

First, you will first need to update your observatory location and timezone.  

The Robert L. Mutel Telescope is located at the Winer Observatory, a private dark-sky observing site near Sonoita in southeastern Arizona (31.6656° N, 110.6018° W), in the MST (UTC-7) Timezone.  You can directly input these coordinates into the "Observatory Settings" window on the left side menu in Telescopius.  Make sure to update the Timezone as well, and set the Min. Altitude to 30 degrees.

Finding When an Object is Observable & The Best Time to Observe:

To find when an object is observable, you may simply type the object name into the search bar and hit enter.  This will pull the object's information page, which includes the object type, background information, and photos submitted from other users.

Further down on the page, there is an Altitude chart, which is shown below.  This can be used to determine the best time to observe your object (if it is observable at all).  This chart shows the object's altitude (or height in the sky) plotted over the course of the night via a red line.  You may hover your cursor over the line to see its altitude at any given time in the night.

An object is observable any time that it is above the minimum altitude (green line) during nighttime hours.  The best time to observe an object is generally at its peak altitude (when it is high in the sky), assuming that occurs over the course of the night.

If the object reaches its peak altitude during the day, then it is best to observe it at the highest altitude reached during the night.  So, for example, it would be best to view M1 (as shown above) around 3:00am MST, as it will reach its peak altitude of 70 degrees.