Sunday, January 28, 2007

atlas comparative table

Snooping around SkyMaps.com today. A little anxious, for some reason, to see the new February Evening Sky Map document. Gotta hold my horses, I guess...

I noticed a link to let one compare star atlases. Very cool!

Ironically, I started doing this on my dark skies companion site library page with the various atlases, old and new, that I have accumulated.

Whoa. The numbers for my Tirion Sky Atlas 2000.0 are way off... Or did they add more into the second edition?!

I like how they document the number of stars, the magnitude limit, price, and the overall "skill level." This is a very useful guide, tremendously helpful for people starting out, and people—like me—looking for more! There are even sample pages from some. Now that's just smart.

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Ah ha. Now I've realised that the second edition of Tirion's Sky Atlas 2000.0 goes down to mag 8.5 and thus adds another 40 000 stars...

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