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Old 17-04-2009, 01:09 PM
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goober (Doug)
No obs, raising Harrison

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Join Date: Nov 2007
Location: Melbourne, Australia
Posts: 796
The Cambridge Double Star Atlas

Just admiring this book that turned up this morning.

A spiral backed atlas, not too large - around twice the area of the Pocket Sky Atlas. The paper quality feels quite dew resistant.

Features include a thorough introduction, including observing techniques, the many double star designations that appear on the maps, references and a "showpiece" section of 133 double stars.

The 30 maps are well done - black stars on white background plotted in 0.5 magnitude sizes down to < 7.5, red galaxies, yellow clusters, mustard nebula, blue constellation lines, lavender shades for the milky way, and the highlight ... many, many labeled double stars in green. No anonymous blob with a bar through it (well, they are still there... but now they have a name!).

Appendices include constellation list, greek alphabet, and a 50 page index of every plotted double star sorted by RA. We get the object and constellation, the designation, plotted position, separation, magnitude and so on.

If you're a double star fan who wants a compact atlas with the designations plotted right on the maps, check it out.
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