Observing and sketching log template

A few folks have had difficulty printing out the image I posted for the observing log. I've created a new version with different dimensions, and tested it here. This one prints out fine for me without any modification to settings. Hope you guys find this useful! Be sure to click on the image to get the full-size version, then right-click and save as to your computer.

Book Review: Sky and Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas

Title: Sky and Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas

Author: Roger W. Sinnott

ISBN: 1931559317

Publisher: Sky Publishing Corp.

Price: $19.95

One of the most immediate frustrations for someone only beginning in amateur astronomy involves finding something to look at, or, figuring out exactly what is seen in the eyepiece. Armed with a nice scope and a dark sky, inexperienced amateurs are faced with a thousand possibilities but little information on what a fuzzy actually is or how to look up more information about it. Thankfully, humans have marked the position of stars for centuries, and recently (in about the last 500 years or so) man has carefully plotted the positions and magnitudes of heavenly objects for later reference. These maps of the sky have long been collected into atlases. And while urbanites may forget it, the sky is filled with millions of stars (or at least several thousand easily visible ones), which makes creating a book of them large indeed. For this reason, many of the most complete atlases are large and not conducive to being held at the telescope. Yet the Sky and Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas seeks to remedy this by providing a compact, fully functional Atlas of the stars in an easily readable format.

In the Pocket Sky Atlas, readers find page after page of 5" x 7" sky charts, and little else. The charts are arranged in groups according to Right Ascension. Each group starts with a map at the celestial North Pole, and following maps work south until reaching the celestial South Pole. In all, there are eight groups, and each group contains 10 maps. There is quite a bit of overlap between maps which helps prevent any one area from ever being stuck on an edge of a page. The chart number is displayed prominently on the upper outside edge, and adjoining charts are marked in smaller numbers in the center of each side. This makes it very easy to quickly flip from one to another while at the telescope.

The charts themselves show stars as black dots on a white background, with the Milky Way shaded a variety of blue, depending on density. Constellations are drawn in by light green connecting lines and very light dotted boundaries. One handy feature for reading a map is that the front cover extends past the inside pages by about an inch, and in this inch space a star magnitude legend is printed along with an angular distance rule and telrad finder circle. Most items are labeled with their NGC designation, the items known by a more common name also have those included. The pages are heavier than average stock, and bound together by ringing, which allows flipping of the book in half so they can be held with one hand at the eyepiece.

Additional maps are included for the Pleiades, Orion sword area, Virgo Galaxy cluster, and large Magellanic Cloud.

Having had a chance to use this several times now, it is difficult to really find a drawback. Stars are only printed down to about magnitude 7 (with a symbol used to note fainter stars of interest occasionally) so occasionally I would find an area where I wish I could see the magnitudes of fainter surrounding stars. With this exception, the Pocket Sky Atlas has proved to be an excellent addition to my observing aides. I cannot recommend it enough to amateurs just starting out who have no need for a large, cumbersome, but more comprehensive Star Atlas. This is a good value and should prove useful for years to come.

Book Review: Celestial Sampler by Sue French

Title: Celestial Sampler
Author: Sue French
ISBN: 1931559287
Publisher: Sky Publishing Corp.
Price: $24.95



Published in 2005, this is another entry in the Sky and Telescope Stargazing Series of titles. The author, Sue French, has for some time pened a monthly column in Sky and Telescope devoted to targets in the night sky for small aperture telescopes (this column is now changed to more of a general deep sky column). Because of this, she is well-prepared to live up to the book subtitle: 60 Small Scope Tours for Starlit Nights. The book's 169 pages are filled with finder charts, object tables, photographs, and eyepiece sketches. The format of the book follows the night sky through the course of a calendar year, offering five different starhopping tours for each month. Before jumping into the tours, an introduction explains some basics of visual astronomy, how to navigate the night sky using a star chart and finder scope, how to judge the conditions of the night sky (seeing, transparency, etc.), and a few visual observation tips. Following this, a general all sky map for each month is included. Readers of Sky and Telescope will recognize these as the monthly maps the magazine always includes, complete with when to use timetables. Yet the meat of the book is found in the tours themselves.

Each month's tour selection involves five different options, and each option covers two pages. Three to four columns guide the reader from object to object and include background information about the listed items and helpful tips from getting from one to the other. Each tour also features a small sky map for the specific area being discussed, as well as an object table that lists the size and magnitude and object type of each item in the tour. Finally, a selection of photographs highlight objects for each tour or help the reader in picking out difficult objects in a field of view. The text is well-written, and Mrs. French handles the material excellently.

The book is not without its drawbacks, however, and chief among them is its construction. In a couple of observing sessions, I have had this book out beside my telescope. While it seems well made, it is not easily held while observing and it is difficult to get the pages to remain open without placing something on them. Since the book subject is actually night sky tours, it would have been far more logical for this book to have been bound in a spiral ring, much like Sky and Telescope's Pocket Atlas. The glossy paper used in the book also seemed susceptible to moisture much more than the Pocket Atlas, which I had laying beside it. Basically, it isn't made as a field book.

With that said, I find the book a valuable addition to my library. Only recently returning to visual observation from the dark clutches of astrophotography, I have enjoyed using the book to learn my way around less traveled areas of the night sky. It has also revealed many objects that qualify as small scope targets, but that look dazzling in a larger aperture instrument. For this reason, I don't think the book is only useful to beginners. Experienced astronomers who may own large aperture telescopes will also enjoy working through these tours. And if you live in the soggy Southeast, reading through these pages will remind you of what the night sky looks like, since it has become all but invisible here!