A new deep sky atlas

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Thanks very much for this. I've downloaded the PDFs for a couple constellations and it will be very useful for exploring what I've captured in my Virgo Cluster image.

[Martin Meredith]

Glad they're of use. Excellent image too!

I'll be constructing a new release at some point this year so any comments welcome. Meanwhile, I'm planning to produce a 'lite' version which goes down to mag 16 to support EAA in smaller scopes of the 80mm class. I need to do some more on-screen star/galaxy hopping first to see what is required.

Martin

[Martin Meredith]

Just to mention that I got an email from Dropbox saying that on 1st September 2017 they are discontinuing the use of the Public folder mechanism which I've been using to host the Pretty Deep Maps (I guess they consider hosting websites via Dropbox to be some kind of unforeseen usage and hence are killing off the possibility?). Since the distribution is very large it may be some time before I find an alternative host so if anyone wants the charts it is best to download in the next 7 days! I do have a new version planned but since it involves a major rewrite in Python it is still some months away.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/14005918/index.htm

Martin

Edited August 24, 2017 by Martin Meredith

[Knight of Clear Skies]

Thanks for the heads up. I've been using your maps to track down quasars and galaxy clusters in my Virgo cluster mosaic recently.

Edited August 24, 2017 by Knight of Clear Skies

[SilverAstro]

7 hours ago, Martin Meredith said:

 so if anyone wants the charts it is best to download in the next 7 days!

Thanks for your magnum opus,

not sure if I have a problem downloading index.zip (tried it twice now) or if Dropbox is playing silly-billy ?
VSVtypeD.pdf is showing as size 0 in (windows)index.zip and VSVtypeI.pdf is missing

I had to get VS.zip to retrieve them.

Edited August 24, 2017 by SilverAstro

[Martin Meredith]

I just checked index.zip and those 2 pdfs are present, so it must be a dropbox/incomplete download issue of some kind. Looks like you've managed to get them now, but do let me know if there are any others that you don't have and I'll attach them to this thread.

Martin

[Paul73]

Very very impressive.

Thank you 

Paul

[Bill S]

Thanks for all the hard work on this. Downloaded with just a few failed downloads that were restarted and then they picked up from where they had got to and completed successfully. A couple of Orion files seemed corrupted when downloaded as part of a seasonal set so downloaded the constellation separately and then OK.

Bill

[SilverAstro]

and thanks @Bill S for confirmation that it was not just me going 'round the bend' ! Amazing, with all this file checking, parity, CRC, md5,  (in some semblance of priority!)  et. al., we can still, all these years after FTP etc. still not download un-corrupted files from the likes of Dropbox !

 

[SilverAstro]

4 hours ago, Martin Meredith said:

but do let me know if there are any others that you don't have and I'll attach them to this thread.

Thanks, no not so far  (but it is a gargantuan effort on your part, and I am yet just a humble neophyte looking at compatibility of small portable freeware windows PDF viewers instead of Acrothingy )

In fact I would not have noticed the earlier problem if I had not accidentally double-clicked on it, thus invoked 'dozexplorer, which balked and declared it invalid, instead of my usual drag'n'drop into 7z - which merrily opened and extracted it all (both times) including the 0byte placeholder ! but no error message! !

[Martin Meredith]

Update: Astrojedi has kindly hosted the complete distribution here for the foreseeable future

 https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/share/rPeOakPlJbjyMe64hF0TwngYysTiOUi6pFtOE3wVbIC

Martin

 

[Martin Meredith]

I'd be interested in any feedback on which pdf viewer works best. There is some discussion from a while back earlier in the thread. For me at least Adobe Reader v 11 works well on the Mac, but Acrobat DC is a pain. Dave in Vermont recommended Sumatra, but I can't test it on the Mac. It is strange that not all viewers are capable of handling local hyperlinks in a pdf document, something that is needed to make the maps remotely useable. 

Martin

[SilverAstro]

Yes I will report back on any good other PDF viewer when I am more practiced in driving your masterpiece

Pro-tem :-

Sumatra is one of my usual suspects, but it is giving me some annoying foibles, like opening lots of new tabs or new windows instead of reusing current window, but only putting the "where you are" hint on the navigation pane,  in the first tab or window

PDF-Xchange is another of my regulars if anyone wants to check it out, looking good so far but it reverts to 'fit page' at each re-navigation instead of maintaining 'fit width'.

Am I supposed to be able to zoom in on a chart but leave the navigation sidebar/pane  un-zoomed, cant do that in either Sumatra or Xchange

Might have to install Acrobat at this rate.

Edited August 25, 2017 by SilverAstro

[Martin Meredith]

No, you can't zoom in selectively. These are literally just individual 1-page pdfs with hyperlinks and so are limited to what you would expect to do with a normal pdf document. There is an illusion of something more in e.g. the charts where clicking on a column appears to sort it, but in reality it is just calling up another pdf document..... 

[SilverAstro]

Ah yes ok thanks, no prob., just that not having Acrobat I was unsure if it was a foible with these other readers (and/or me )

[SilverAstro]

I am liking PDF-Xchange Viewer, it seems to handle the hyperlinks ok so far.  There is a freeware portable version available so it can be run from a USB stick/drive (even from the same place as your DSA masterpiece folder) without need for installation.

Also, I have discovered it has a very nice "loupe" zoom tool which can selectively magnify a resizable small region from the chart. (it would be magic if two monitors could be used !)

[Martin Meredith]

The Pretty Deep Maps are now in what I hope will be their permanent home, hosted on the open science platform Zenodo:

http://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3522809

cheers

Martin