Thread: Help on m83
View Single Post
  #3  
Old 24-04-2014, 10:15 PM
Weltevreden SA's Avatar
Weltevreden SA (Dana)
Dana in SA

Weltevreden SA is offline
 
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Nieu Bethesda, Karoo, South Africa
Posts: 216
Free star hopping charts you can download

Hi Simon, we've all been through the frustration of trying to pinpoint the location of an object in places where there are few bright stars plus the help of light pollution down here on Earth. I can recommend two very good chart sets you can download for free. The first one, by José Rámòn Torres & Casey Skelton, is called their A set. Go to the bottom of their splash page to find the links.

http://www.uv.es/jrtorres/triatlas.html

It's OK in A-4, but if you take a thumbdrive with the PDF on it to the local quick-print shop they can do it back-to-back on the A-3 size. Those are on a scale that's really nice out in the field. High resolution and easy to hold up to the sky to noodle out what the star patterns are.

The second set is by Michael Vlasov, here:

http://www.deepskywatch.com/deepsky-atlas.html

It's more detailed, so maybe better to save it after you've navigated around enough with the Torres/Skelton set. I printed my Vlasov set out in A3 and put them in a dew-proof flip-file you can get an office supplies shop. These flip-files are basically clear plastic sheet-protectors that have been bound into sets of 10 or 20. Those things have saved my charts on many a soppy night wen I won't give up till the scopes dew over.

Chasing down objects using old-fashioned paper is for me a lot more gratifying than pointing an iPhone to the sky and trying to translate those eensy screens into a big wide sky.

Good luck. =Dana
Reply With Quote