RASC Montreal Centre - Articles - Favourite Astro Books

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE STAR ATLAS?

Montreal Centre member Mark Bratton replies:

Uranometria 2000, Volume I and II
by Tirion, Rappaport, Lovi
Published by Willman-Bell, Inc.

There are a number of classic sky atlases which were published in the last century: Norton's, Skalnate Pleso, Sky Atlas 2000 and Atlas Eclipticalis, Borealis and Australis being among the most well-known. They are all useful publications and have a lot to recommend them. Uranometria stands head and shoulders above them all. While it is not perfect, it has features which make it absolutely indispensable to dedicated amateur astronomers, especially that fast-disappearing dinosaur known as the Starhopper.

Without trying to be facetious, the night sky (and by extension, the universe) is a mighty big place. Traditionally, the toughest thing to do in this hobby, at least until the advent of digital setting circles and computer databases attached to telescopes, has been to point a telescope at an object of interest in the sky. The history of amateur astronomy is littered with well-intentioned potential enthusiasts who managed to point their newly-acquired telescopes at the moon, the planets and a few bright stars before becoming completely frustrated by their inability to locate faint fuzzies: star clusters, nebulae, galaxies. With the aid of Norton's or Sky Atlas 2000, many bull-headed, persistent amateurs have managed to track down every object in the Messier catalogue and many of the brighter objects in the New General Catalogue. Tellingly, however, once most amateur astronomers have tracked down the 200 brightest deep sky objects in the sky, as well as a clutch of interesting double, multiple or variable stars, most nights they will return to the same handful of bright or easily located objects. The reason is that most star atlases are simply not detailed enough, and not at a large-enough scale to facilitate a comprehensive tour of the universe.

Uranometria 2000 addresses these failings and has become easily my favourite star atlas. The night sky is divided into 473 separate charts in two volumes (some of the charts overlap and appear in both volumes). Over three hundred thousand stars brighter than magnitude +9.5 are plotted as well as about 10,000 deep sky objects. Right there you have a resource which will allow you to explore the night sky profitably for decades to come, even if you use a monster-class 20- or 30-inch dobsonian telescope. Unlike other star atlases, Uranometria features a detailed grid system printed on every chart which, generally speaking, divides the sky up into increments measuring 1-degree on a side. This is critical, as this scale easily matches the low power field of most amateur telescopes. Since almost every square degree of sky has at least one star brighter than magnitude +9.5, the experienced star hopper can push off from an easily visible naked eye star and, using Uranometria, navigate to any object of interest plotted in the atlas. Over the course of my most active years as an observer, I've been able to track down almost 2000 objects of interest using my 15-inch Dobsonian and Uranometria together. And literally, I've only scratched the surface: there are still many years of observing ahead searching for new, never-before-seen objects.

A great plus to the atlas is the fact that, despite its comprehensiveness, it is easily used in the field, being solidly bound and massive without being ultra-heavy. In damp, unpleasant conditions, this atlas can "take a lickin' and keep on tickin". It is relatively inexpensive as well: each volume sells in the $50 to $70 range. If anything ever happens to the book in the field (say, you run over it in your car, grinding it into soft, muddy earth) you can replace it without breaking the bank. Sky Publishing produced a beautiful, three-volume atlas a few years ago called the "Millenium Star Atlas" which was even more comprehensive than Uranometria. It plotted more deep sky objects, more accurately, as well as stars to magnitude +11. It was, however, extemely expensive: the three-volume set retailed for $250.00 US. It was beautifully printed and I would be absolutely mortified to bring something like that out into the field where dew, spilled hot coffee or any manner of nasty things could happen to it. A set of books like that would stay safely on my library shelf. It would therefore be useless. I think Sky Publishing realized this as well. I don't think the atlas sold too well and it is now out-of-print. (I just checked the Internet and found that Sky Publishing is coming out with a "paperback" edition of "Millenium" retailing at $149. Don't know what the rationale is: a paperback binding would not stand up very well in the great outdoors. I would be interested to see what they mean by "paperback".)

I have the original edition of Uranometria published in the late 1980's. A drawback of the atlas is that the deepsky objects are plotted using databases which were available in the 1980s. There are many objects which were either poorly-plotted or non-existent, based on the fact that the databases themselves were in error. A lot of work has been done since that time to clear up these errors. A great aid to correcting many of these errors is a companion catalogue to Uranometria, known as "The Deep Sky Field Guide to Uranometria 2000". It is a great addition to the atlas itself.

Nowadays a lot of telescopes are sold with computer aides and databases which do all the work for the observer as they effortlessly find objects in seconds, which used to take many minutes of patient starhopping with atlases to find. While this may seem like progress, personally I think this is a pretty sterile process and takes a lot of the fun (and, admittedly some of the frustration) out of observing. I've always found that a lot of the fun in observing is in the hunt. As your experience increases and you become more familiar with your telescope, your star charts and the night sky, it is both a challenge and a real pleasure to go searching for faint deep sky objects which are seldom, if ever, observed by most amateur astronomers. Great resources like Uranometria 2000 give the dedicated amateur astronomer a useful tool to explore "where the wild things are".