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Messier Objects .

Roger Fairhurst

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Roger Fairhurst

Roger Fairhurst

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I am interested in a reference book of Messier Objects and have looked at the selection on Amazon.

There are several candidates but although several have the "Look Inside" feature virtually none show extracts of the actual object descriptions. Here is a sample:-

The Deep Sky Companians - The Messier Objects - Levy & O'Mearer

Atlas of The Messier Objects: Highlights of the Deep Sky - Stoyan, Binnewies & Co.

The Observing Guide to the Messier Marathon - Don Machholz

Observing the Messier Objects with a Small Telescope, In the footsteps of a great observer - Philip Pugh

Anybody own one or more of these?

I've got Turn Left at Orion, Pocket Star Atlas and several other reference books but nothing specifically just "Messier".

Experience/appraisal of any of the listed books would be appreciated.

Kind regards

Rooger

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Roger Fairhurst

Roger Fairhurst

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I first posted the above in the "Essential Reading" thread which I think was probably the wrong place. So I started this thread which I somehow managed to accidentally post before adding the explanation- a case of a keystroke too far me thinks!

Oh and my name's Roger not Rooger!

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stevepeverall

stevepeverall

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I have Atlas of The Messier Objects: Highlights of the Deep Sky - Stoyan, Binnewies & Co.

It's a lovely book for to have.

The book is large with glossy pages and rich images on each of the Messiers. The format is well laid out with two or more pages on each of the MOs in numerical order. The format includes a quick glance reference table for each of the objects which looks like this:

M23

Degree of difuculty: 2 (out of 5)

Minimum apperture: naked eye

Type: open cluster

Distance: 2050 ly

Size: 20 ly

Constellation: sagitarius

RA: 17hr 57min

Dec: -19o 2'

Magnitude: 5.5

Apparent diameter: 35 min

This is great for quick reference then there are 3 paragraphs beow this; one on 'history', one on 'astrophysics' and a further on 'observation'

It's not a cheap book and its not essential to have either but worth having just for the images alone IMO.

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acey

acey

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Another vote for O'Meara. Not a book for field use but great for cloudy-night reading, and something of a modern classic. I found his approach very instructive - mentally creating pictures of clusters etc, some of which are quite fanciful, but are a great way of grasping and memorizing what you see. He used a 4-inch in Hawaii, and has legendary visual acuity - his observations correspond to what you might hope to see with an 8 or 10-inch scope at a dark site.

I also have his Caldwell and "Hidden Treasures" books. As the series goes on his entries for each object become longer and the style becomes more self-indulgent. His style is rooted in American nature writing which to British readers can seem overly rhapsodic, not to say purple, and the "pirate" theme in Hidden Treasures is frankly tedious. The Messier book is his best and deserves a place in every serious deep-sky observer's collection.

Incidentally, O'Meara takes the traditional line that M102 is non-existent (a re-observation of M101) but he also discusses a number of notable non-Messier objects in the book and I think NGC 5866 (nowadays often referred to as M102) is one of them.

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stevepeverall

stevepeverall

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Seems like a good book Steve. Very similar to   O'Meara's  book... One good thing about the latter is the hand sketches, which will help you visualize what the object will actually look like in the telescope.

Yeh, it looks like those two books are pretty similar Emad.

I notice your book has star charts which mine doesn't which is pretty strange considering it advertises itself as an atlas.

There are quite a few sketches in Atlas of The Messier Objects too, but not enough. I sometimes feel a little underwhelmed at the eyepiece after eyeing up the nice colour images.

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