Telescope Reviews: The best $12 I ever spent on this hobby....

I apologize in advance if everybody else knows about this already, but it was sure news to me. I recently acquired an accessory for my bino observing sessions that is just an extraordinary value. It's Sky & Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas.

Before you say "oh, another atlas, big deal" let me say this - I acquired this and a new Nagler 16mm Type 5 eyepiece on the same day and I'm more excited about the atlas.

I have a Sky Atlas 2000 ("deluxe version",$60) and it's a thing of beauty and a joy to behold - but a real pain in the neck to lug around and actually use in the field especially when you're just binocular observing. If you've ever spent time with one you know that (1) the lack of constellation lines can be infuriating but not nearly as annoying as (2) not having any indication of the connecting pages to the chart you're looking at without unfolding the darn index page way at the back that has to be unfolded to use like all the other pages, not to mention (3) how much space it takes up to actually use when you've got one chart unfolded and have to look at the index to find another chart - an 8 foot desk would be convenient but, curiously, not always readily available when you're standing in the middle of a field at night.

But, yes, it's pretty and it's impressive to show off to friends ("What, you can't see Orion in that chart? Here, let me show you") and you can buy a nifty Sky Atlas 2000 Companion Volume - a really useful $30 accessory thats even less useful in the field when you're just using binoculars.

And the SA 2000 is the best of the lot.

Don't get me wrong, I love a good atlas. In addition to the SA 2000 (and the SA 2000 Companion Volume), I have the Burnham books, the Night Sky Observer's Guide (Volumes 1 and 2), The Modern Moon (Wood), and Rukl's Atlas of the Moon. But, except for the SA 2000, I've never taken one out in the field; I'd just feel silly doing so. I've also got about a half dozen really useful charting and planetarium programs - but lugging a computer out to the field seems even sillier for binocular observing.

Enter Sky and Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas. I found this through a post on CNs Beginners Forum from user FirstSight (thanks!!) who says "This is NOT the usual set of greatly abridged charts you see in most compact sky guides - it's a full-fledged 80-chart sky atlas that includes stars down to mag 7.5, plus the locations of selected dimmer stars of particular interest, e.g. Barnard's Star. It includes the 1500 most visible deep sky objects. The author notes that mag 7.5 was chosen because it corresponds well with what is visible in most finderscopes - thus optimized for visual star-hopping." See this post for the rest. Retailing for a whopping $20 and available at WalMart (yes, WalMart, look here) for less than $12, it provides the most well organized, well presented, and just darn useful collection of charts I've ever used. And it's sized so that I can stuff it inside the spare space of the soft case for my Obie 15x70s. It fits in my glove box along with my Celestron 10x50 Nobles. It fits in the eyepiece drawer of my Teleport along with all the eyepieces.

In the Pocket Sky Atlas, the constellations leap off the pages at you. And moving from map to map is intuitively easy and conveniently labeled to boot. OTOH should you ever need to access the chart index it is (amazingly!) on the inside back cover - easy to find and use without unfolding and (even more amazing!) just opposite the object index you will most likely use most often, the Messier Catalog. It's spiral bound and will lay flat or can be folded back for easy one handed use.

Of course it does have some oddities in common with the SA2000 that I guess I'll just have to get used to. For example, when you want to move off the right edge of a chart, you have to flip back to the next section and when you want to move off the left edge of the chart you have to flip forward - just the opposite of what you'd intuitively expect, but consistent when you number charts in hours of right ascension instead of convenience.

But these are nits. I'm just so excited to have an atlas that's really designed to be used in the field and one that is especially valuable when all you've got with you is a pair (or six) of binoculars.

What can I say - little things excite me these days

- Art

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2006 "Bagging on a Budget" Award for Excellence in Binocular Astronomy
Garrett 25x100 IF, Oberwerk 15x70, Celestron Noble 10x50, Meade 10x50 and 8x42 Travelviews
William Optics Zenithstar II 80mm APO
Teleport 10" - an incredible all-in-one Planetary/DSO/"Grab and Go"