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Book Project: Discovering Double Stars


Ags

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  • 2 weeks later...

I am very pleased to say the Southern Hemisphere and all-sky flavors of Discovering Double Stars have been completed and published. This completes the project, and I will come back to it toward the end of next year to update position angles and separations based on the latest data.

Download the Discovering Double Stars books here 

Edited by Ags
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  • 6 months later...

I have started work on a major update to this book. The goal is one edition that covers the entire sky while covering many more doubles and keeping to the page count of the original version. This obviously requires a radical rethink of the whole book. On the data end, the goal is to have a tight and fully automated link to the Washington Double Star Catalog data.

I have just about got to ground level on the new book, which covers 860 doubles now (compared to 300 in the original northern hemisphere book) with the same page count. 

Here is the new format. I have full page charts that go down to mag 7.5, rather than individual finder circle charts per double. With about 10 doubles on each two-page spread there will be much less page flipping in the dark. I have been working hard on a spacing algorithm that avoid excessive overlaps of finder circles on any given page. The whole book now looks fine in that regard, with the solitary exception of (of course) Orion.

newddsformatpng.thumb.png.91941b72362565c3c2e87948f2ac05be.png

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Agnes

Congratulations and thank you for the effort you are doing ! Keep up the good work !

I'm just asking if the book binding will not cover part of the charts ?

This cannot happen with the text.

 

Another question or suggestion.

I use often CDSA and the Taki Double Star Atlas. Apart of double stars, both contain a nice number of Deep Sky Objects.

On pages with empty space left (like the sample shown)  and on related charts, would it be useful to add some ''showpiece'' DSO ?

 

I did not printed yet your book on double stars , so I did not use it yet. But I intend to do so.

But I will use the opportunity to tell you thank you for your generous work.

 

Regards, Mircea

 

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Thanks!

The full bleed graphic will go into the binding, the trick is to make sure the important data keeps away from the binding. 

I can add the best nearby DSOs, I will have to see if it crowds the page too much.

Edited by Ags
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Here is the next iteration - with color coding of doubles - green are those from the original hand-picked doubles for the first edition, blue are are bright and close, red are fainter or wider.

I solved the margin issue by zooming out slightly and moving the doubles for the page slightly left. It took many iterations but I got the numbering of each double nice and clear on the chart.

I reduced the number of stars by dropping limiting mag to 7.0, and changed the formula for calculating star radius to a new cleaner formula so it is easier to set minimum and maximum star sizes.

Doubles #4 and #8 on the chart shows the next problem to fix - labels bombing the finder circles - these need to be suppressed automatically when they compete with a finder circle.

doubles_v2_color_coding.thumb.jpg.36d8bd45a1b37ca32c445d01340a598f.jpg

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Agnes

Wonderful work is what you are doing !

Please let me make another suggestion.

Color printing is costly due mainly to the cost of color cartridges.

I suggest those colored rectangles to be reduced to squares of the same color, before every star name.

This will reduce a lot the consumption of color cartridges but preserving the information to be transmitted.

 

I would like to comment a bit on the proposal of adding some DSO in your book.

Not many but the Messier objects and some more. Like the ''RASC Finest NGC Objects List'' as compiled by Alan Dyer. Both would make a total of 220 objects ... ''la crème de la crème'' !

I made this because I see the observation of a double star as a Deep Sky observation.

I do and I report my observations this way. In the eighties I had the occasion to read a lot of Sky and Telescope issues, owned by my friend Gavril Beches. My favorite column was ''Deep Sky Wonders'' by Walter Scott Houston.

Often he mentioned double stars or variable stars or a peculiar object, not only galaxies, or clusters or nebulae. I believe I follow in his spirit if I look at any minute detail of any corner of the sky.

Last week I observed more times Barnard's Star in Ophiucus and I honestly believe this is a DSO.

(One night I made measurements of this star by using my Baader Micro 12.5 mm Orthoscopic eyepiece, used as a Ring Micrometer. OK, I admit, this is something else.)

 

Regards, Mircea

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Unfortunately, how it works with Amazon and Lulu printing is that even if one small element is color, the whole book is costed as color. You can't make savings by reducing the size of color elements.

My only concern with adding DSOs is clutter, but I'll have a think...

@Mircea now I realise you are referring to home printing! In that case, you make a valid point. Another thing to think about. 

Edited by Ags
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Yes Agnes, you are right.

I was thinking to home printing, thank  you for taking also this in consideration.

I love printed books and magazines. I publish articles and papers on the History of Astronomy in the Proceedings of the Romanian Society for Cultural Astronomy / SRPAC.

I had the wonderful experience of re-editing with Dan Uza the book ''[removed word] sa inveti stelele'' by Victor Anestin, first published in 1913. This is a guide for beginners. The title it translate as ''How To Learn The Stars''. 

To say so, Victor Anestin was the Flammarion of Romania.

https://astromix.ro/product/[removed word]-sa-inveti-stelele/

All the best, Mircea

Edited by Mircea
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Agnes

 

I'm really envious on you !

You are able to do this difficult things so fast , congratulations !!!

The color coding is much better this way.

 

One more comment. Are you sure Stellarium will recognize the star names ?

I know you done a lot of work on this.

But Bayer or Flamsteed star names are recognizes by Stellarium or Aladin Lite while proper names not all.

 

Keep up the good work, Mircea

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I keep forgetting to put in the additional names. I've got SAO numbers for almost all of them and cross indexes to bayer and flamstead.

I just realized the screensot above includes a red diagram id at top left... just to be clear, that's for debugging only, it's not part of the final book.

Edited by Ags
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I was out testing the new layout tonight. I don't have the book yet, I just printed a few pages in black ink. It turns out one page was enough to keep me busy.

I was using my C6 (with 6.3 reducer) and Speers WALER 13.4 mm, for a power of 70x.

35 Cas - a wide blue/orange pair.

SHJ 355 AC - A wide pair, no obvious color, minor component is a 1.3" double, did not split it. 

H 3 23 AC - the name's a mouthful, turns out they're the eyes of the ET cluster. A nice surprise. Must rename to Phi Cas in the book and add a description.

STF 70 AB - A close pair, the companion is very faint.

STF 3050 AB - A tight, equal yellow pair, lovely. Had to change to a 4.9 mm to split it (190x).

I also dropped in on some old faithfuls - Achird, Almach, Double Cluster.

The new format was a joy to use. No page flipping, enough detail to find targets. With the whole region shown in mag. 7 detail, star hopping was always possible. Very productive and straightforward.

Edited by Ags
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Just to be clear  the book hasn't been updated on Amazon yet. Amazon still has the original format. I expect it will be a month at least before it has worked through all the edits and final tweaks.

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Houston, we have a problem... The charts are generated using vector graphics. It appears that print platforms recognize text in vector graphics as body text, so print jobs are rejected due to text in margins. Looking at various solutions, such as converting text to curves or even bitmapping the diagrams. I am trying a quick hack now which would mask text outside the margins.

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Well, it took a day of battling with Amazon's PDF validator, but I have managed to pass their quality checks. There are twently different ways to make text not render in the margins, but or course only the twentieth way I tried worked. The others failed with "text in margin/gutter" error even when there was no text anywhere near the borders of the page.

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Ags

Those are all good news, congratulations !

I'm glad to find out the new format is working well on the field.

To me it seem very OK the number of objects you observed in one evening.

Except when I focus on one specific target  (for drawing or some measurements for example), I use to observe an average of about ten object per session.

Clear sky, Mircea

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I started past midnight and wrapped up at nearly 1:30. I wanted to go on, but not as young as I used to be... quite pleased to have picked up so many new targets in that time!

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Hoping to have another go tonight on some Cepheus and UMi doubles. It's an area of the sky I find quite difficult - a bit dim generally and on the orange, city side of my skies, but the new format gives me hope I can inch my way to a few of the targets.

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I was only out for 20 minutes last night as I have a business call early this morning, but fortunately nights are getting longer and I could start observing just after 23:00 local time.

Despites the rush I managed to quickly "book" Pi UMi, Pi Cep and STF 2883. I also passed by Alfirk on the way to STF 2883. 

Pi Cep has a separation of 1 1", I couldn't split it in the C6 at 190x, but the Airy disc was clearly elongated. I think collimation needs a little adjustment  then I can have another go.

Edited by Ags
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