Sky Atlas 2000.0 2ed Deluxe Edition
by Wil Tirion, Roger W. Sinnott

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Book Reviews of Sky Atlas 2000.0 2ed Deluxe Edition

Book Review: A New Version of a Classic Star Chart
Summary: 5 Stars

The new version retains all the features that made the 1st edition a best seller and adds many new ones. The first thing I noticed when my copy came through the mail is the size. In its elegant dark maroon cover, instead of the original black, the deluxe edition is a full inch larger than the original version. And the charts are more accurate, since they have been plotted by computer, based on the European Space Agency?s Hipparcos catalog, instead of by hand as in the original, based on the older SAO Catalog.

On first glance, the obvious cosmetic differences aside, the two atlases look pretty much the same. But several significant changes have been made. The most important is a stretch in the magnitude limit from 8.0 to 8.5. This one-half magnitude difference means that almost twice as many stars are plotted, 81,312 in the new version, vs. 43,000 in the original, so that it is easier to identify star patterns when you go star hopping to find that faint galaxy or elusive planetary nebula. The increased coverage of stars was easily apparent to me when I compared the charts of Sagittarius on page 22.

The 26 charts are still numbered the same, and cover the same areas of sky. But there is now the addition of two extra chart pages, providing detailed maps of both poles, the Pleiades, Barnard?s star, Proxima Centauri, the Virgo Cluster, and the Central Part of Orion. These last two should be of great help for both Messier and Herschel hunters. There is an Introduction explaining all the new features of the Atlas, and an index in the front for all the Messier objects, showing on which page(s) they can be found.

Star dot sizes are crisper in the new version, and are drawn by the computer according to a continuous magnitude scale. In the old version, star dots were ?binned? in half-magnitude steps. The shapes of nebulosities, galaxies, and Milky Way isophotes also seem to be drawn with more detail.

There are still a few things I will have to do to make my Atlas more useful. In my old copy, I hand drew in all the constellation figures with a pencil. Now I am going to have to draw them all over again. I also penciled in page numbers on the outside corner of each chart, to help find the right page in the dark. They tried to correct this deficiency in the new edition by folding the charts so the number shows up in the upper left hand corner. But I am still going to have to pencil in those page numbers on the right corner.

Sky Atlas 2000.0, 2nd Edition, is available in five versions: Deluxe (black stars, white sky, deep-sky objects color-coded by type, Milky Way isophotes, spiralbound, $49.95), Field (white stars and deep-sky objects, black sky, loose charts, boxed, $29.95), Field Laminated (same as Field, but laminated and spiralbound, $69.95), Desk (black stars and deep-sky objects, white sky, loose charts, boxed, $29.95), and Desk Laminated (same as Desk, laminated/spiralbound, $69.95). I do not recommend the version with white stars on a black background for field use.

Ed Flaspoehler, REFLECTOR Editor, Astronomical League

Summary of Sky Atlas 2000.0 2ed Deluxe Edition

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