Observer's Sky Atlas: The 500 Best Deep-Sky Objects With Charts and Images

This is a magnificent atlas. At first glance it seems perhaps too abundant in details, but the organization of the data is so good that its reading does not overwhelm the reader. It is incredible how it has been possible to condense as much information in so few pages. I stargaze with binoculars and this guide is a good reference. When deep sky objects are suitable for binoculars, it is specified with an icon. More than half of the 500 objects cited in the Atlas are available to 10x50 binoculars. The atlas is designed in such a way that by illuminating it at night with red light some details of the maps stand out and others disappear, so at night it looks like another book different from when read by day. A superb book for binocular astronomy.

This book excellent and high-level. It’s very clear and useful to learn about sky stars.

In its fourth edition, splendidly produced by Firefly Books, Erich Karkoshka's Observer's Sky Atlas is the one indispensable guide to deep sky observing. It is one step beyond the following brilliant guides: Nightwatch, Fifth Edition by Terence Dickinson with Ken Hewitt-White; Turn Left at Orion, Fourth Edition, by Guy Consolmagno and Dan M. Davis; and Star-Hopping for Backyard Astronomers, First Edition, by Alan M. MacRobert. These books (and others) get you started. They prepare you for this book, which is aimed at deep sky observing.What sets this guide apart is the degree of its organization. Your journey begins on the inside front cover, which depicts the best times to observe each region of the sky. Select Leo, which is region E11; it is best placed for viewing in April. Navigate to E11, which occurs in order of the regions, on pages 74-75. You observe along the top photographs of bright objects in Leo.On the left page are Leo's coordinates, its broad location among nearby constellations, the distance of its main stars from earth, its deep sky objects ('Nebulas'), its most notable stars, including double and variable stars. This gives you tabular information that is actionable information for the telescopic obsever. One curious feature is the domino next to each object: the more dots in the domino, the more easily seen is that object.On right page middle is a map of Leo showing locations of the main objects. Below this map is a lozenge shaped closeup of the objects. These closeups point out the essentially clumpy nature of deep sky observing. The maps are essential for effective seeing at the telescope's eyepiece.Throughout the book is an emphasis on stellar distances, a situation made much less uncertain for nearby stars by the launch of the Hipparchos satellite in 1997 and the Gaia satellite in 2016. We know the distances of local stars with much more certainty than we did 30 years ago thanks to these satellites.I don't know about you, but the pleasure that I, a mortal being, get from the contemplation of the long-lasting universe is increased considerably by knowledge of the sky while observing. The Observer's Sky Atlas delivers this knowledge as never before.

Creo que es el libro definitivo para astrónomos aficionados que ante las cartas del cielo, no quieren pasar horas buscando en foros y páginas de internet si ese objeto que encontraron en las cartas, lo van a poder ver finalmente en el telescopio, binocular o no. Lo explica todo muy sencillamente y con la suficiente información como para poder preparar una noche de observación y hasta de astrofografía.El libro llego es casi perfectas condiciones salvo por un par de páginas finales de la vía lactea que parece que al estar cerca del borde se rompieron un poco. No necesito quitarle una estrella por esto, el libro vale cada centavo pagado.

Bought this as a gift for someone. They had told me about an old school star map they bought at Cape Hatters years and years ago. It was spiral, like a notebook, and you could write on it and wipe it off. I looked and looked and could not find it. After reading reviews on probably 100 different books, I selected this as the gift. The gift went over great, we spent hours looking at it upon opening. It’s loaded with info for all. The recipient has been gazing at stars for years, through telescopes and binoculars or just standing out in the dark. Me not so much, I’ve been around telescope probably more than the average person, can point out a few things by eye, but that’s about it. The book was good for both of us, had stuff she understood but broke stuff down to where I could understand. I can see why they say good for all stargazers

I've been an amateur astronomer and telescope maker since childhood, and am normally pretty skeptical about night sky observing books, which tend to be pitched at a novice level, and filled with diffuse and general info that I know cold. I received a flyer featuring this and three other books at Stellafane last week, and while I could quickly rule out three of the four, this one seemed worth a preview on Amazon, and what I saw convinced me to give it a try. It arrived yesterday, and I have to say that I am really impressed, and will be using this observing atlas regularly. It has an incredible amount of information, arranged in a clever and highly organized manner. Lumping globulars, open clusters, galaxies, and actual nebulae all together under one "nebula" category is a bit odd, but these are in fact properly sub-categorized by number. It takes a little while to decode the dense info that is served up, but explanatory pages just before the core set of "star charts" do a good job of this, and once you are up to speed on the pattern, you have a lot of info at your disposal. Having this all in a single compact volume makes it more likely to be put to use at the telescope, where more verbose multi-volume approaches stay put on the shelf. I think that the author has done a great job, providing the observing community with a valuable new resource.