Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Buy the 2001 edition; Forget the 1987-88 edition, August 27, 2006
In 1987 and 1988, the two-volume Uranometria became the first star atlas to go deep--showing about a quarter of a million stars to magnitude 9.5. It included thousands of deep-sky objects for owners of the large scopes that were coming onto the market. The second edition (2001) goes a bit further--to magnitude 9.75, but its real improvement is elsewhere:
Imagine opening a road atlas to a two-page spread of, say, the State of Montana and finding the eastern and western halves reversed. In place of one state, you have two disjointed halves.
Ridiculous, you say?
Of course. But, believe it or not, that's the way the first edition presented its two-page chart spreads. Also, the page to page seqencing was utterly counterintuitive. The problems come from the sequencing of the charts in order of ascending right ascension (for more details, see my review of the previous edition).
When the second edition of Uranometria came out in 2001, the compilers were wise enough to correct the fault and sequence in descending right ascension. Uranometria is, finally, a practical work for advanced astronomers with large telescopes. The first edition? Don't even take it as a gift.
Uranometria vs the Millennium? You would not go wrong with either one. The paperback Millennium shows four times as many stars to magnitude 11, but some reviewers have commented that it shows fewer deep-sky objects. Whether true or not, the added precision of Millennium is definitely attractive, especially considering the small price difference between the two: $116 vs $100. Let's see if Uranometria answers with a softcover edition.
Uranometria, like Millennium, works nicely in combination with Sky & Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas. Use the Pocket for quick basic finding and Uranometria for going deep in pursuit of the challenging stuff.
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7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
16 Years of Use, August 7, 2005
I bought both Volume I and II when they first came out in the late 1980s and have been using them to find deep sky objects and double stars and to track comets ever since. The only criticism I have is that dozens of errors in the RNGC are reprinted in the original volumes, although some of them may have been cleaned up in later versions. One thing I like is that the bindings are tough and are made to open flat. This, combined with the heavy paper stock, means the books can stand up to quite a bit of field use wear and tear, as mine certainly have over the past nearly two decades.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
fantastic, November 7, 2007
1.Though it shows stars to magnitude 9.75 AND 30,000+ non-stellar objects, it is VERY EASY to navigate. I myself found the finder charts(magnitude 5.5, four pages per volume) will do. Both volume 1&2 include a set of 6.5-magnitude star atlas(also serving as finder charts). And the tabs, the pointers(showing the adjacent chart numbers), the indices are great too.
2.26 close-up charts(to magnitude 11) are fantastic!
3.The open book can lay flat and the paper is tough.
So Uranometria 2000.0 or the Millennium Star Atlas?
My answer is you need to buy Uranometria 2000.0 FIRST.
Because it has its volume 3 that tabulates data of all the deep-sky objects plotted in volume 1&2.
And for a decade Uranometria 2000.0 had been the only choice for advanced amateurs AND astronomy writers. When you refer to several most popular guidebooks on the market, you will see the text matches Uranometria 2000.0 VERY WELL.
Btw you need volume 2 too.
Sure you know Orion standing athwart the celestial equator(the volume 1 covers the northern hemisphere to -6), which means even Orion's "feet" are shown in the volume 2.
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