2 June 2006

I was In Barnes & Noble tonight browsing the astronomy section and got my first look at the Sky & Telescope Pocket Sky Atlas. I don't think it would fit in your pocket unless you were a giant, but it is a nice atlas none the less.

The first thing that I noticed was the binding. It is a metal comb type of binding that they call a spiral although it isn't. The cover is made of one piece and the comb passes through two sets of holes in the back. I don't think the comb will permit the pages to be folded back the way a true spiral binding would but I didn't want to damage a saleable book so didn't try it.

Opening it I noticed that the paper is not the usual book paper, since it is printed with color ink, but it does not appear to be the normal clay coat glossy paper usually used for color printing either. I wondered if it was Tyvec or some similar waterproof material but the back cover does not point that out as a feature so I guess it is just paper.

The charts look very nice and, at least in the brightly lit store, were easy to read. Unlike a lot of field books they didn't just reduce the size of the charts to fit the available real estate. The charts are full size but there are more of them. This means that most of the type is big enough for me to read without a magnifying glass. But the charts are drawn according to Right Ascension so the constellations are broken up and parts of most of them appear on two or more charts. At the back of the atlas are detail charts for the Pleiades, Orion's Sword, the Virgo Galaxy Cluster and the Magellanic Clouds.

The color scheme appears designed to be compatible with a red observing light.

The legend indicates that stars are included down to Mag 7, deeper than most atlases but not deep enough for my binoculars or my widefield telescope.

The MSPR printed on the back, and the price B&N is getting for it is $19.95.