Seeing deeper into southern skies...

[Mr. Subatomic]

Howdy Yall!:)

I've gotton to that stage in amateur astronomy when planispheres and AS&T magazine sky charts are just not good enough. I am finding that they do not show much detail and I am after something that features dimmer objects and more DSO's.

I'm guessing I need to veer towards actual charts or maps as opposed to simple planishperes. I was wondering whether these maps come in different levels of detail, i.e. whether they come in stages of maximum magnitude and number of objects shown?. Do they come in sort of beginner, intermediate and advanced formats where there is more detail for each stage? If so, feel free to make some reccomendations of books of maps, charts and atlases that you think show a decent number of dim stars and DSO's.

I've been looking at Sky and Telescope's Pocket Sky Atlas for a start. Could anyone tell me how that is?

:D Thanks heaps!

[glenc]

Have you tried free astronomy software like CARTES DU CIEL?
http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/index.html
There are other options at:
http://freeware.intrastar.net/planetarium.htm

[Gargoyle_Steve]

There definitely ARE different levels of star charts - and here are 3 excellent examples - best of all they are absolutely free to download! It will only cost you the price to print them out.

http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=6323

I have the mag 6.5 charts from this link (the first set he did) - 12 pages cover the entire sky +1 for a close up detail view of the Coma Berenice area. These can be printed at A4 size but I ran them off at A3 and found that much better. Laminated back to back fashion this makes a nice, compact, total sky chart for basic use.

I've looked at the higher mag set of charts here but so far I have not printed out any of them. The full set consists of dozens of charts to cover the complete sky but remember unless you're heading a fair way north you probably won't need them all anyway.


http://www.iceinspace.com.au/forum/showthread.php?t=1878

I have also printed out this entire set - 20 charts from memory at A3 size again (plus 1 extra galaxy cluster again). I like these for the constellation layouts, but find I use the previous set more often. Again I laminated these back to back.

Hint: I eventually found a good quality green ink marker that I use to highlight various objects on the laminated surface (wipes off when you're finished too) - red markers are invisible under red light so any markings you've made are completely invisible and you can't find what you marked, blue markers show up very clearly but you can't read the fine writing on the charts through blue ink under red light -it all turns to black. Green ink is just right - visble but transparent!

Have a good look at both (or all 3) of these sets and see what you think - the price is right so it will cost you very little to give them a go.

Cheers!

[Mr. Subatomic]

This is great thanks so much!