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Reflector Book Review:
Millenium Star Atlas
Category: Observing
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Millenium Star Atlas
An All-Sky Atlas Comprising One Million Stars to Visual
Magnitude Eleven from the Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogs
and Ten Thousand Nonstellar Objects.
by Roger W. Sinnott and Michael A.C. Perryman.
Three Volumes, Hardback, in Slipcase, 1997
1,542 pages with Introduction and Index,
$249.95 (shipping extra)
ISBN: 0-933346-84-0 (three volume set)
Sky Publishing Corp.,
P.O. Box 9111,
Belmont, MA 021 78-9111, USA.
(617) 864-7360.
E-mail: Skytel@skypub.com
http://www.skypub.com.
A Joint Press Release from Sky Publishing
Corp. and the European Space Agency, in December 1997,
announced the completed publication of ESA's monumental
positional survey of the celestial sphere, representing
the most substantial improvement of astronomers knowledge
of the distribution of stars within our galaxy ever
achieved. Construction and publication of the Hipparcos
and Tycho Catalogues, the final products of ESA's Hipparcos
space astrometry mission, occupied European scientific
teams since the launch of the Hipparcos satellite in
1989. These results have at least ten times the accuracy
of all previous sky surveys.
This vast stellar census has been
available to the world's astronomers since June 1997,
through ESA's Hipparcos World Wide Web site, various
stellar data centers, and the wide distribution of the
multi-volume catalogue. While the printed catalogue
bears a superficial resemblance to a telephone directory,
with page after page of closely spaced numbers, one
of the most remarkable highlights is the final three
volumes containing actual maps of the sky, recently
completed and now being distributed. These three volumes
have now appeared in the large format Millenium Star
Atlas, published by Sky Publishing, to serve the
ever more demanding needs of both professional and amateur
astronomers, and teachers of astronomy.
Some basic facts about the Millenium
Star Atlas. The total number of charts is 1,548,
covering the entire sky, pole to pole. The average coverage
of each chart is 5.4 degrees by 7.4 degrees. The physical
size of charts is 7.6 by 10.4 inches (19.3 by 26.4 cm),
with a chart scale 100 arcsec/mm. The reference system
is consistent with J2000.0, although the actual epoch
for binary and high-proper-motion stars is J1991.25.
The magnitude to which the atlas is 99.9 per cent complete
is V mag. 10.0, with a nominal magnitude limit V mag.
11.0. The number of stars contained in the Hipparcos
and Tycho Catalogues is 1,058,332. In addition to the
million-plus stars of the Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues,
more than 10,000 deep-sky objects have been plotted.
The main source for galaxies was the
Lyon-Meudon Extragalactic Database (LEDA), which includes
a large number of entries from the European Southern
Observatory survey of the early 1980s. Galaxy clusters
were plotted from the Abell catalogue (with southern
extension and supplement by Corwin et al). For open
clusters, identifications are from the Gosta Lynga catalogue
(1983 revision).
The Millenium Star Atlas has
25 times as many stars as Tirion's Sky Atlas 2000.0
and three times as many stars as Uranometria 2000.0.
It is the first atlas to include orientations of all
plotted galaxies, and the first atlas to include galaxy
clusters. The Atlas contains all newly discovered Hipparcos
variables and binaries and shows bright and dark nebulae
delineated in greater detail.
Most amateur astronomers prefer an
atlas in which the sky is depicted continuously in decreasing
right ascension from the left-hand page to the right-page
of each two-page spread of charts. Uranometria 2000.0
doesn t follow that arrangement; the right-hand page
covers higher R.A.s than the left-hand one. In the Millenium
Star Atlas, on the other hand, within each right-ascension
gore, the charts work their way from the north pole
to the south pole as you would read a page of text.
Within each declination band (containing from 2 to 24
charts each), the charts proceed from high R.A. to low
R.A. (that is, east to west). This arrangement is very
intuitive and natural, as any two facing charts form
a spread with some overlap down the middle.
The Millenium Star Atlas is
published in three volumes, hardcover, 9.25 by 13 inches
with 1,548 charts. In its slipcase, it weighs 19.3 pounds.
This makes it large and bulky to use as a field atlas.
But if you have a specific target in mind, it might
be useful to photocopy a particular chart page to take
observing with you.
Sky Publishing says there are no firm
plans for a companion deep-sky guide similar to the
"gray book" for Uranometria 2000.0. But the data on
stars, including stellar distances, variability, and
double stars, will be available on a CD-ROM from the
European Space Agency. It is called Celestia 2000, and
is due out by early 1998. The atlas does not come with
clear plastic overlays for marking and plotting, but
they, too, should soon be available separately.
Each volume of the Millenium Star
Atlas includes a small "finder-atlas" like the one
at the back of Uranometria 2000.0 so you can tell at
a glance which charts cover which parts of the sky.
In 29 pages of text at the front of
Volume I, the authors describe how to use the atlas
and interpret the various symbols on the charts. Also
included is recommendations on the type of equipment
appropriate for observing each type of object. The reference
and bibliography section contains more than 100 citations
to the original source catalogues or journal papers
consulted. There are also nine tables in this introductory
text, listing Hipparcos data on the 48 brightest stars,
the 20 nearest stars it observed, the brightest doubles,
the 20 stars of highest proper motion, the counts of
stars in each magnitude class up to 11, and so on. There
is also a table (the first of its kind) giving detailed
star counts and star densities broken down by constellation.
For further details on the Millenium
Star Atlas, see Sky Publishing's website site, SKYOnline:
www.skypub.com/msa/msa.html,
which includes a Frequently Asked Questions page, as
well as several articles describing early scientific
results from the Hipparcos mission.
Ed Flaspoehler
former Reflector Editor
Reviewed in the February 1998 issue.
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