Customer Reviews

The New Atlas of the Stars: Constellations, Stars and Celestial Objects (Star Atlas)

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It is hard to please every one with a single star atlas, and indeed a variety of useful versions are out there in the market (e.g Uranometria, Star Atlas 2000, Norton's, Starry Night, Sky
Tools etc.). This release is unique in several ways. The atlas consists mainly of actual widefield photographic images of the heavens, with a transparent overlay denoting objects of interest and constellations lines. This approach is similar to Serge Brunier/Akira Fuji's The Great Atlas of the Stars.

Things I like about this book? 1. objects include several more interesting NGC objects instead of the typical Messier tour. 2. Atlas covers the southern skies, a treatment rarely seen in Northern Hemisphere publications and very valuable 3. Sectors of the maps are logical and not overly crowded. 4. The maps will give you a unique persepective of the night skies that are hard to get with any other atlas. 5. Photos are realistic and do not suffer from perspective distortion common in wide field photos. 6. Quality of the book is very good. Firefly, the publisher, has done a great job.
What do I not like? 1. Photos are good but in my opinion defintely not as good as Akira's (although I thought Akira's was a tad underexposed for that particular class of visual atlas). The Milky Way region in particular appears to be a little too overexposed to be aesthetically pleasing or useful. A little creative photoshopping might be the ticket. The author should have opted to take photos with at least a 6cmx4.5cm medium format camera instead of a 35mm camera for better image quality. Akira uses a large format camera and the difference in quality and resolution clearly shows. 2. Accompanying 1 page facing text is too cursory to give each map sector the full justice, hence relegating the atlas to more as a nice visual planning supplement or for coffee table enjoyment. An advanced hobbyist would probably prefer tables of notable galaxies, double stars, etc. for each map sector.

All in all, this book is unique and definitely worth having in one's collection. I recommend it.

I teach people who are new to astronomical observing on how to find Deep Space Objects through their telescopes. Many people start out in this hobby with a new telescope or binoculars only to discover they don't know what to look for and then when they do want to see something don't know how to find it. The New Atlas of the Stars: Constellations, Stars and Celestial Objects (Star Atlas) is an inexpensive resource that seems to help newbies. This book is not for someone who uses RA and Dec circles or has a GoTo telescope or someone with a few years of experience. It is a very good book for people with small aperature Dobsonians, refractors and binoculars who need to master the major constellations and then move on to star hopping. It also is good for learning the basic "buzz words" in observational astronomy. It is a great companion to "Binocular Highlights" by Gary Seronik. The pictures show what the night skies (in each season) might look like on a clear night through a 3" or 4" wide view scope, and then what the relative position is for many of the "easier" objects from the brighter constellations. I especially recommend this book to someone who has spent some bucks for a telescope and after being able to only find the moon - gave up in frustration and put the scope in the closet to collect dust. The New Atlas of the Stars can help one master the basics of observing and is not so pricey as to try out. Jim Norton

The 'maps' are large (slightly fuzzy) color pictures of sky with plastic overlays showing constellations and a few objects of interest, but... only a few. Large pages feature five thumbnail sized pictures of deep sky objects per sector, with unhelpful blurbs like 'requires a 400mm telescope to see.' Not even minimal information like coordinates and magnitudes.

Not useful with a large scope (no coordinates or fine detail to find even the few objects mentioned), not useful for small scopes (most of the objects mentioned are too faint), and not useful without a scope with such tiny pictures.

This atlas is what you would expect from a star atlas. It lays out everything nicley and has some outstanding pictures to go along with it.