sky charts?

[spartanm300i]

this may be a stupid question, but is there a download file out there that will contain sky charts? as i wanting to get into astronomy but i want to know what im looking at and for before i start looking at telescopes. many thanks marc:iamwithstupid:

[rowan46]

stellarium is a free programme you may like

Stellarium

[sunshine185]

Not sure about charts, but you can download a program called stellarium. this will show you everything in the sky, in real time. You can input your longitude/latitude and it will show you where to look from your own backyard.

[kharga]

These people Skymaps.com - Publication Quality Sky Maps & Star Charts publish a monthly info sheet (A4) that it printable. It has a sky map on one side and a list of things to see with eyes, bins and scopes on the other. It also shows a sky calender for the month.

[Demonperformer]

JR's website on Deep Sky Astronomy - choose the most appropriate size/faintness for your needs. You can print off the pages you want when you want, and build up a printed atlas a bit at a time.

HTH

[Zul]

These people Skymaps.com - Publication Quality Sky Maps & Star Charts publish a monthly info sheet (A4) that it printable. It has a sky map on one side and a list of things to see with eyes, bins and scopes on the other. It also shows a sky calender for the month.

I'am using this too i just print all the pages and always when i go to observe the sky i grab those pages.

[Squagnut]

There are other good planetarium software - Cartes du Ciel, which has the wonderful extra bonus of being able to control a Goto telescope mount, and MyStars - not free, but cheap and my personal favourite planetarium prog due to its clarity and ease of use.

At first you'd probably be best off with something simple like the printout maps mentioned earlier, but planetarium programmes can show you live where planets and other solar system objects are, and if you get deeply into astronomy then you can add vast detailed star catalogues to them. For the time being, there's little point in knowing about stars fainter than magnitude 7 or 8.

[iwatkins]

Stellarium is a great tool for interactive use.

If you do want hard copy star charts, here is a list I've collected that you may find useful although it isn't exhaustive. All are PDFs:

Ed Vazhorov's Mag 6.0 Beginners Atlas

JR Torres TriAtlas Multiple versions

Taki's Mag 6.5 Atlas

Taki's Mag 8.5 Atlas

Taki's Mag 7.0 Double Star Atlas

Andrew Johnson's Mag 7.0 Star Atlas

Cheers

Ian

[Rebus]

And to add to the above list from Ian:

Michael Vlasov's Deep Sky Atlas (stars Mag 9.5, Double Stars Mag 8.5, Deep Sky Mag 13.5)

[acey]

I never figured out how to print charts from Stellarium (with objects labelled) so I never use it. The links given already to freeware charts are all good, especially TriAtlas. But before getting a telescope it's also well worth investing a little bit of money in something like the Philips planisphere or a basic star guide (e.g Collins Gem), doing some naked-eye constellation finding, then maybe moving up to binoculars.

With the naked eye you'll see stars down to about magnitude 6 at most (and more likely magnitude 5) so initially you only need something that goes to that sort of depth.