Show Us Your Historic Star Maps

[Stu Todd]

Fantastic Andrew and Jeremy ( a bit jealous the late, great PM signed yours)!

Digging through the cupboards at my old clubhouse, I remember the Becvar volumes, plus another similar. Am I right in thinking these were basically coloured dots representing the star positions, with little else?

I will try digging one out when a vaccine comes along to save us all.

 

Stu 

[JeremyS]

31 minutes ago, andrew s said:

I have it too and used to dream of building a Schmidt camera. I still think the black and white images stand up well to the modern colour images.

Very true, Andrew. Which is why I still have this one:

[andrew s]

While not something I have owned, when I was a teenager I managed a personal tour of the Cambridge observatory.  In addition to seeing my first glimpse of Sky and Telescope (not easily available in the UK then) the map room was full of wonderous atlases and around the walls stacks of a complete set of contact prints form the original Schmidt DSS.

I was one lucky lad.

Regards Andrew 

[JeremyS]

Probably most people have the 1997 catalogue and atlas of cataclysmic variables 😧

 

[andrew s]

 

10 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Probably most people have the 1997 catalogue and atlas of cataclysmic variables 😧

Strangely not, but I raise you a Catalogue of the orbital elements of spectroscopic binary  systems and Tables of spectral ines of neutral and ionised atoms. No pictures and not good reads.

Regards Andrew.

PS I have trump in reserve if needed

[JeremyS]

 

8 minutes ago, andrew s said:

Strangely not, but I raise you a Catalogue of the orbital elements of spectroscopic binary  systems and Tables of spectral ines of neutral and ionised atoms. No pictures and not good reads.

Regards Andrew.

PS I have trump in reserve if needed

I might have peaked too early, Andrew.

I'm going with the Reference Catalogue and Atlas of Galactic Novae:

Edited April 11, 2020 by JeremyS

[andrew s]

To avoid getting banned for hijacking this thread I place my last two (who are you kidding) cards on the table. The Arcturus has the spectra of , surprise surprise, Arcturus and the Sun over 300 hundred pages and the Multiplet tables has 96 pages of spectral lines and their transitions and needs a magnifying glass to read.

Regards Andrew 

Edited April 11, 2020 by andrew s

[Paz]

So many epic old astronomy books! I do enjoy these sorts of things, there is no such thing as too-obscure!

I was in a huge second hand book shop in Hay-on-Wye a while back and it had a substantial astronomy shelf with many books you could describe as "special" in every sense of the word, I would have bought a few if I hadn't been under supervision!

[Paul M]

I had this one too but I'm sure it was from the Daily Mail. mid 70's.

I can't help thinking that it's still lurking somewhere. There is certainly a photo of my 6" Fullerscope posing in front of it, somewhere...

[Oldfort]

I am quite partial to old star atlases.  Here's the first of 3.

[Oldfort]

Here's the second one.

[Oldfort]

And the third. Tbh I think this would be as likely to deter people from astronomy, rather than enthuse them.

[Knighty2112]

On 27/02/2016 at 23:36, Paz said:

I wonder how many SGL'ers have got historic star maps of some description?

Here's a picture of the Skalnate Pleso Atlas Coeli (Antonin Becvar, 1962). When I got Burnham's Celestiial Handbooks I noticed that he referred to this map and to Norton's Star Atlas so I went looking for a copy of each. Norton's Star Atlas (I got the 16th Edition, 1973) was easy enough to get hold of but this took a long time to find! Both are Epoch 1950.0 maps. The Atlas Coeli is my favorite map - totally impractical for the field and out of date but great to pore over and as much art as a map - it was printed from hand-drawn originals.

I have since had half an eye on other old star maps but will try not to get drawn in to buying any more - it seems that sometimes really obscure things come up for sale at huge prices!

 

I got a copy of this off flee bay a few months back in very good condition for a 60 year old book. Although I have the clear sheet to measure star positions, I don’t have the smaller key chart and was not aware until now there was one that came with the book until I found this post. As this looks as though it was loose in the book it has obviously been lost at some point. Any chance of a close up image of the key chart and I will see if I can make a copy of it if possible? 😀

[Knighty2112]

Actually, no worries. I’ve found a copy of the key chart posted online, so I’ve printed a copy of that one up. 😀