Atlas of the Sky. 16 fold out maps of the sky (approx. 16″ x 22″ each). Also included a large plastic grid overlay. The pages do not show any signs of use. The book has a blue soft cover, silver text, and a metal spiral-type binding. The cover shows wear due to it being oversized compared to text and map pages. Wear might also be due to the overall size of the book.

Author Info:
Antonín Bečvář IPA: [ˈantoɲi:n ˈbɛtʃva:r̝̊] (June 10, 1901 – January 10, 1965) was a Czech astronomer who was active in Slovakia. He was born (and died) in Stará Boleslav. Among his chief achievements is the foundation of the Skalnaté Pleso Observatory and the discovery of the comet C/1947 F2 (Bečvář) (also known by the designations 1947 III and 1947c).

Bečvář is particularly important for his star charts: he led the compilation of the Atlas Coeli Skalnate Pleso (1951), published by Sky Publishing Corporation as the Skalnate Pleso Atlas of the Heavens, which was the state-of-the-art atlas of its kind until Wil Tirion’s “Sky Atlas 2000.0″ in 1981. He also compiled Atlas eclipticalis, 1950.0 (1958), Atlas borealis 1950.0 (1962), and Atlas australis 1950.0 (1964).

see it here on craigslist
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/bks/1173148800.html

From the http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2007/02/14/star-scammery/
page on 11-14-07

Name a Star from $29.95
Get your official star package not a cheap email printout!
http://www.BuyTheStars.com

Oh, and ISR spelt my daughter’s middle name wrong.

Besides, people kept expecting them to turn up in black uniforms, wear gloves indoors, and make inexplicable allusions to “The Prisoner”.

This practice (selling star cor.) is as bad as that of the nutcase S. B., Uri G., ect. They prey on the weak-minded and gulible of society.

String them up!!! There are laws about fraudulent activitites.

Lunatik

And here come the battle fleets!!!!

(OK, I admit it…I did spend about a half-hour scouring the pics trying to find a match .

Also, the claim I have heard is that with binocs you can see slightly fainter than you can if you had a lens of the same size (depending on the exact characteristics of the binocs). There are companies that make binocular telescopes (JMI for example) where you might be able to find out more.

There is a formula for finding the limiting magnitude of a telescope. The link in the previous post can do the calculation.

The question is whether or not binoculars have the same limiting magnitude as a telescope with an objective equal to one side of the binoculars, or both combined or somewhere in the middle.

i.e. my medium binos have 3″ objectives. Are they equivalent to a 3″ telescope for limiting magnitude, or a 6″ telescope, or something in between. Presumably either side would be the same as a 3″ scope for limiting magnitude, but since nobody closes one eye to use binos, I can conjecture that it might be different.

Thoughts? wisdom?

http://www.go.ednet.ns.ca/~larry/astro/maglimit.html is a handy link.

I’ve never noted that there are any stars or constellations named after cephalopods. The heavens are lacking indeed.

I took my medium binos with me on my recent trip to Death Valley. Man, to be out in a place with actual dark sky for a change was so awesome. When you live in the city it’s hard to remember what the sky really does look like.

The problem now is to deduce where and what the extraneous image(s) could be.

Interesting problem. (Hey, have we got an idea for a weekly competition?).

Ivan.

I tried rotating pieces of the image, etc. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that they aren’t covering the same area. I don’t supposed they told you the angular size of that image they posted. You could take any triangle pattern of three stars from anywhere in the sky, with very few other identifying features, and you could probably “almost” get it to match up with any star field with enough stars in it.

My high school girlfriend bought me a star. She decided to save herself 50 dollars by buying it un-framed. She then decided to nag me incessantly until i took it to a framing shop and got it framed myself. Yeah.

My sister mentioned that they thought of doing a star naming thing for me. I politely told them I would prefer that they buy me another year’s membership to The Planetary Society or something similar, or as Beche-la-mer said, if the funds were going to the observatory operations, that would be fine.

When I was working at the planetarium back in my grad school days I’d hate it, too, when the folks came in wanting to see ‘their’ stars — and they’d show me this crappily photocopied star chart purporting to show how to find the star. One of them looked like the star had been drawn in with a pen!

I remember one woman coming in (and this is the one that started me on my road to denouncing the star registry folks because it was their product) who had gotten a nice certificate showing that a mourner had named a star after her late husband. She was so touched that she wanted to see “Bob’s” (not his real name) star and wanted us to show it to her. The chart was a lousy photocopy with the name International Star Registry on it. The “star” was a blob of ink. The letter accompanying the “chart” seemed to indicate that all astronomers would refer to the star in their research as “Bob’s” star and that her husband would be immortalized in this way.

These scumbags were capitalizing on a woman’s grief, fer cryin’ out loud! And lying, to boot.

Since that time they’ve changed their tune slightly, but they’re still trying to imply that their product is “official” and they’re still not being truthful about it. I can’t countenance that and I warn people away from such products at every chance.

Now, I have seen fundraisers for planetarium facilities that sell stars off the dome — which, if they make it clear that that’s what they’re doing — is fine with me. But, I don’t want anybody to be fooled into thinking they’re name a star officially, and I certainly don’t approve of charging people $50 bucks or whatever it is now for a crappy photocopy and a packet full of promises that turn out to be nothing more than snake oil.

I took the two images into photoshop just to see how they fit up. The three brightest scale down perfectly to fit on top, but the others do not line up. I believe the only remaining solution is that they was a heavily edited picture.

About star names, instead of spending money to buy a star that nobody can see, you could always name your children something like Fomalhaut or Spica! That way they are named after a star everyone can see. It’s kinda the same thing, a great conversation piece, and if they don’t hate you for getting made fun of in school too much, they might grow up to love science! By the way I actually tried this line of reasoning but my wife wasn’t convinced. If my super-nerdy friends can convince their wives to name their poor children after their D&D characters or in Elvish, I thought a star name sounded like a plausible idea, I mean why not?

Frankly, I cannot control my rage at these bastards. They’re nothing but sociopathic professional criminals who should have been prosecuted years ago under RICO.

“what they printed kinda sorta looks like the field with my star in it, but danged if I can figure out what they did. Cropped, rotated, distorted?”

I think the word you’re fumbling for is ‘photoshopped’
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