神马文学网Pocket Sky Atlas
来源：百度文库 编辑：神马文学网 时间：2024/04/19 01:40:19
Want to become a better amateur astronomer? Learn your way aroundthe constellations. They're the key to locating everything fainter anddeeper to hunt with binoculars or a telescope.
For an easy-to-use constellation guide covering the whole evening sky, use the big monthly map in the center of each issue of Sky & Telescope , the essential magazine of astronomy. Or download our free Getting Started in Astronomy booklet (which only has bimonthly maps).
The Pocket Sky Atlas plots 30,796 stars to magnitude 7.6 — which may sound like a lot, butthat's less than one star in an entire telescopic field of view, onaverage. By comparison, Sky Atlas 2000.0 plots 81,312 stars to magnitude 8.5, typically one or two stars pertelescopic field. Both atlases include many hundreds of deep-skytargets — galaxies, star clusters, and nebulae — to hunt among thestars. Sky & Telescope Once you get a telescope, to put it to good use you must have adetailed, large-scale sky atlas (set of charts). The standards are the Pocket Sky Atlas , which shows stars to magnitude 7.6; the larger Sky Atlas 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 8.5); and the even larger and deeper Uranometria 2000.0 (stars to magnitude 9.75). And read how to use your charts effectively. You'll also want a good deep-sky guidebook, such as Sky Atlas 2000.0 Companion by Strong and Sinnott, or the more detailed and descriptive Night Sky Observer's Guide by Kepple and Sanner, or the classic if dated Burnham's Celestial Handbook .
Can a computerized telescope take their place? I don't think so —not for beginners, anyway, and especially not on mounts that are lessthan top-quality mechanically. As Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer sayin their Backyard Astronomer's Guide ,"A full appreciation of the universe cannot come without developing theskills to find things in the sky and understanding how the sky works.This knowledge comes only by spending time under the stars with starmaps in hand."