 The Sky and Telescope celestial atlases (such as the famed Tirion Atlas 2000.0 series) are the standard by which all other star charts have been judged for a half century. Now Sky and Telescope has raised the bar with this new Pocket Sky Atlas. Thanks to its compact size, convenient spiral-bound lay-flat design, and easy-to read labels, there has never been such a wonderfully detailed star atlas so handy to take on trips and use at the telescope or with binoculars. The 80 charts in this second printing contain more than 30,000 black stars on a white background to magnitude 7.6. The stars are individually sized in ten one-magnitude steps according to their relative brightness. Some 1,500 deep-sky objects are included, color-coded by type (including 675 galaxies to magnitude 11.5 shown oriented as they are in the sky). The color-coding shows double stars, variable stars, and special objects. Open clusters, globular clusters, galaxies, bright nebulas, dark nebulas, and emission nebulas are also color-coded, and are drawn to scale if they measure over 20 arc minutes in size. All of the Messier, Caldwell, and Herschel 400 objects are plotted and identified. The best double stars are named, and three dozen red (carbon) stars are marked. The charts show the constellation boundaries. The same stick figures outlining the familiar constellation shapes that are used in the monthly star charts in Sky and Telescope and Night Sky magazines are shown to help you find your way around the sky. In the back are special close-up charts of the Orion Nebula region, the Pleiades, the Virgo Galaxy Cluster, and the Large Magellanic Cloud. The easy-to-read chart labels are legible even in dim light. Facing pages show contiguous areas of the sky, and indicators in the margins of each chart give you the chart numbers of adjacent parts of the sky. There is minor overlap between each pair of charts on facing pages, but substantial overlap between the non-sequential charts of adjacent sky areas, to help keep you from losing your way as you move from chart to chart. The scale is 1° in declination per 3/16 at the equator, and 2-13/16 per hour of right ascension. The 110-page 6 x 9 softbound book easily fits into a cars glove compartment so you need never leave home without your star charts. An Index lists all the named stars and identifies the chart(s) exh can be found on. The Index does the same for all galaxies shown on the charts; all open and globular clusters; all bright, dark, and planetary nebulas; and other items of interest. Separate Indexes list the charts for all 109 Caldwell and 110 Messier objects. |
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