Mathematical Astronomy for Amateurs

Places to get you started: Information on variable star observations both visually and with a camera, as well as other types of observations besides variable stars https://www.aavso.org/observers Basics on Orbit determination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit_determination https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss%27s_method https://www.amazon.com/Mathematical-Astronomy-Amateurs-Beet/dp/0393333426/ For sketching just get blank sheets of paper and start off with a pencil or colored pencil. Or you can print out sheets with circles that represent the field of view of the telescope. After sketching the planet or object you can note down what eyepiece you were looking at with. Conditions such as seeing, transparency, temperature, local time, UTC etc. Any changes you noticed or colors, that sort of thing. Note a lot of this is to expose you to the different elements of astronomy and science in general. I.e. figure out how a camera works and how to process the images, how celestial mechanics is described, what sort of math you have to do, how to take observation and organize those observations so you can come back to them in weeks or months time and figure out what you were doing. If you fail at it the first time or fifth don't get discouraged because you'll likely have learned something in the process that you can apply when you try it again. Edit: One more book on cameras and how they work, especially for astronomy: https://www.amazon.com/Astronomy-Cambridge-Observing-Handbooks-Astronomers/dp/0521617626