Atlases and Apertures

[25585]

While there are a good number of books and guides for eye and binocular star gazing, there are also quite a few atlases around.

What aperture telescopes what be good for seeing all magnitudes of stars and most DSOs in the following;

Pocket Atlas 

Turn Left at Orion

Cambridge Double Stars

Cambridge Hershel 

Nortons

Phillips

Sky Atlas 2000

Instellarium

Uranometria  

[Demonperformer]

From the point of view of individual stars, Uranometria is about the deepest of the printed atlases there (I think) and it goes down to mag 9.5. Any telescope should be able to see all of them (when I had an 80ETX, from the LP-infested front garden I could visually get down to 10m+).

For the double stars, your limitation is not so much the magnitude, but the difference in magnitudes between the components and the separation. The smaller the difference and the bigger the separation the easier it is. I would think to see all of them you would require quite a big aperture (I don't have a copy).

For DSOs you are in a completely different league. You are thinking not only of integrated magnitude, but the surface brightness (this is why M101 is so hard to see when it is big and has a fairly bright "catalogue" magnitude). To try to see visually all the objects in the Herschel 2500 will require a scope of at least 18" aperture and very dark skies ... together with gaining a lot of experience of "seeing" things ... yes, that is a real thing. Have a look here to get some idea of the challenge involved.

Not sure, but if your "instellarium" is a typo for "stellarium", but if so it would depend on which packs of stars you downloaded. But even the basic set includes a lot of things that you are never going to see visually ... objects at 19.something magnitude are really only going to be accessible with ccd imaging ... and even then you are going to find them a challenge (to put it mildly!).

HTH

[Mark at Beaufort]

My main interest is DSO observing and this is done by star hopping using different star atlases.

If I am undertaking a quick grab and go I will use my Sky and Telescope pocket atlas - its good to find the brighter DSOs. 

To go deeper I initially used my Uranometria which goes down to mag 9.7 and was great in my search for the Herschel 400 objects. About 18 months ago I purchased the Interstellarum atlas which I much prefer. It outlines objects that can be viewed in 4", 8" and 12" scopes but also highlights the best filter to use - UHC, O-III or H.Beta. I personally find this atlas more user friendly.

If I have a really difficult object I refer to my Stellarium software and I produce a map which corresponds to the FOV of a particular EP in my 12" Dob.

Finally, I have the Cambridge Double Star atlas which is good to determine particular double stars to view on a planned observing session.