Telescope Reviews: NIGHT SKY Magazine going away??

Actually, though the proportion of visual observing is higher in Night Sky, the total quantity is much higher in Sky & Telescope. Sue French alone covers more each month in "Deep-Sky Wonders" for S&T than she covered every two months in Night Sky's "Take a Star-Hop".

The difference in that case is largely the target audience. Sue does an incredibly good job of speaking to a wide range of abilities, but she can only perform minor miracles. A typical Deep-Sky Wonders column includes one or two objects that could easily be in Night Sky, ranging all the way to things that challenge highly experienced observers with giant scopes under dark skies. But there are bound to be plenty of people who think it too hard and plenty of others who think it too easy.

Also, there's a question of how much knowledge and skill you can take for granted. Will people know what to do when you ask them to nudge your scope 1.6 degrees north-northwest, or do you have to spell it out each time?

For instance, each issue of S&T includes a list of ten or fifteen variable stars that are particularly interesting that month. It doesn't look like much -- just a few square inches of real estate. But every now and then I "do" the whole list, and believe me, it represents a huge amount of observing time. You have to locate each star, then compare its brightness to surrounding stars, then repeat the process several times over a period of weeks or months, keeping records of what you're doing. But it assumes that you have your own star charts (each maybe for one or two stars) and that you can locate things by RA and Dec. It would never work for the Night Sky audience.

Anyway, I think there's universal agreement here at S&T that we have to include more material that's easily accessible to beginners and to people who are only a little bit fanatical about observing. Fortunately, there's already some stuff at that level; Fred Schaaf's discussion in S&T of what's happening in the sky every month is really very much like Alan MacRobert's "Sky Tonight" in Night Sky.

I regret to say that my own "Constellation Close-up" column is clearly dispensable. I've had incredible fun writing it -- more fun than I've had at any job since I started working for a living at age 14. But it's basically a feel-good piece more than a helpful observing guide, and in any case, I was beginning to run out of bright, interesting constellations.

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Tony Flanders

eyeglasses
6x15 and 8x32 monoculars
8x25, 7x35, 10x30 IS, 10x50, and 15x70 binoculars
70mm and 100mm achromatic refractors
4.5", 7", and 12.5" Dobs