| Celestron Sky Maps are a very useful teaching guide for learning the night sky all year round from the northern hemisphere. While you wouldn’t set off on a road trip to a new part of the country without a road map, you don’t need to try to navigate the night sky without a map either. Even if you already know your way around the major constellations, these large seasonal Sky Maps can help you locate all kinds of fascinating heavenly objects.
The front cover has a specially designed luminous planisphere that rotates to simulate the seasonal progression of celestial objects across the sky at any hour of any night during the year. When the planisphere is pre-exposed to light, star positions on the planisphere glow brightly for an extended period against a dark background, mimicking the appearance of the actual constellations.
Simply rotate the star disc of the planisphere until the day and month on the outer dial line up with the time on the inner dial. All the stars and deep space objects down to magnitude 5 that are visible to the naked eye in the northern hemisphere appear on the face of the planisphere in their correct orientation. What you see on the planisphere is what you see in the sky.
More than a thousand stars and deep-sky objects are listed and plotted on the eight individual 9¾" x 7" star charts. There are two charts for each of the four seasons, They cover the sky for northern hemisphere observers from the north celestial pole down to about 50° south declination. Each chart has detailed printed listings of the best objects visible to the naked eye or through binoculars, as well as those that are small telescope objects, for each of the constellations on the chart
An illustrated reference section provides basic information and the visual characteristics of various types of stars, nebulas, and galaxies, listings of the constellations, the brightest stars, the nearest stars, and more. There is a listing of those constellations in which the four planets visible to the naked eye can be found during each month from now through the year 2019.
This very useful 22 page Celestron Sky Maps book weighs 14 ounces. Its pages measure a good-sized 13¼" x 11¼" and are printed on a heavyweight, moisture resistant card stock. The pages have a special comb binding so they can lay flat or be folded over when you are out observing.
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