Book project: Discovering Deep Sky Objects

[Franklin]

1 hour ago, Ags said:

Next up is the Discovering Double Stars book; I want to update it to cover 1,000 doubles (without increasing page count).

300 to 1000 without increasing page count? Maybe a Vol 2 would be simpler?

[Ags]

I hope to be clever with diagrams and layout and add more information without cluttering. The finder charts cover 10 degrees, so I can point out the other good doubles on each chart; the supplementary doubles wouldn't have the detailed coverage of the central double but if each chart has a few other doubles within a finder-hop from the central double, then an observer's sessions would be much more productive. My own experience with the book (and my orange skies) is that getting in the general area is much more time-consuming than the final hop, so I want to enrich that final phase and reduce the dependence on wide area searching. For example, the DSO book covers 615 targets, although there are only 386 which get the full treatment with descriptions etc.

Also, i have an idea to put more information in the finder charts, so you can get all key details about a double at a glance, without looking down to the text.

Also 1,000 is the goal for the whole sky, so not quite so many in one of the hemisphere books.

Edited June 15, 2022 by Ags

[fozzybear]

I've pressed buy on the long river due tuesday

[Gfamily]

Just a quick note to say the two books I ordered (DDSs-N and DDSOs) arrived today and I'm blown away by how good they are. 

Far easier to navigate than the PDF versions, and they look very good on the page.

MrsG was similarly impressed and we're looking forward to using them when we're next out at Astrofarn France.

Many many thanks @Ags, I'll let people see them at the next meeting of our astronomy group in July.

EDIT

I should point out I ordered from Lulu, which means I have the spiral bound version.  I can see this will significantly improve the usefulness in the field. 

I also see that Amazon don't offer it in a Spiral binding, so it's worth having a think about how you'll use it before deciding where to buy. Personally I avoid Amazon unless there's absolutely no alternative (there usually is an alternative 😊) 

Edited June 20, 2022 by Gfamily

[fozzybear]

On 18/06/2022 at 20:14, fozzybear said:

I've pressed buy on the long river due tuesday

Arrived Tuesday and I am well impressed with the book and at a very reasonable Price. Many thanks. Ags.

[Ags]

Thanks all. My own copy of the "final" version arrived today. Clear skies tonight but work tomorrow 🙄

[Ags]

The charts helped me locate M56 last night, which is almost completely drowned in light pollution where I am. I have been looking for it for years, so that's a big win for the book!

[Ags]

I have been working on a new layout for the book, and ordered a proof copy before Christmas. It finally arrived this week.

A couple of errors jump out at me. I've forgotten to remove the position angle indicators inherited from the double star version's code, leading to a vertical lines in each finder circle. How did I not see that? The cover graphic is supposed to be the Rosette Nebula but I'll have to shoot another picture.

 

[Ags]

Still working on the book, but life has been a bit upside down the past few months. I decided to add an extra chart per region showing all the NGCs down to mag 13, mostly for me as I have a semirealistic prospect of a semipermanent dark site that could be equipped with a semilarge dob... This is an early version of the new 'deep' chart, showing how I also call out the more crowded sections onto the following page. Still a lot of work to do, like fixing label positions, extracting meaningful descriptions from the NGC shorthand descriptions and so on. The green margin and the green diagram id at top right are for debugging, they are not really part of the final chart.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Ags