dedoda
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Double Stars for Small Telescopes:
More Than 2,100 Stellar Gems for Backyard Observers (Stargazing Series)
By Sissy Haas
Publisher: Sky Publishing
Number Of Pages: 184
Publication Date: 2007-05-01
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1931559325
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9781931559324
Binding: Paperback
Summary: Good overall, but some serious flaws
Rating: 3
While the listing is overall a good culling of double stars from longer lists (i.e. the WDS catalog), and the comments are helpful and descriptive, there are three notable flaws not already mentioned by other reviewers. 1) The coordinates are given with no indication of the epoch. Presumably, they are 2000.0 coordinates, but that is nowhere explicitly indicated. 2) Coordinates are only listed to the nearest tenth of a minute in RA and minute of arc in dec. That's enough to make you wonder what's what in a crowded field. 3) In this era of GOTO telescopes, it's too bad the author chose to list the stars from the WDS catalog using discoverer codes (reminiscent of the now badly-outdated "Burnham's Celestial Handbooks") incommensurate with the way these stars are cataloged in common telescope pointing programs like Software Bisque's "The Sky." It's far more cumbersome to have to enter coordinates than to type a simple code like "WDS STT 34." For example, Haas uses the code "CorO" as an abbreviation for "Cordoba Observatory," whereas the WDS code (also used by The Sky) is "COO." (A web search on "CorO double star" yielded far fewer relevant hits than a search for "COO double star," which indicates to me that the latter is a more common usage
http://rapidshare.com/files/126340874/Double_Stars_for_small_telescopes_Haas.pdf.html
More Than 2,100 Stellar Gems for Backyard Observers (Stargazing Series)
By Sissy Haas
Publisher: Sky Publishing
Number Of Pages: 184
Publication Date: 2007-05-01
ISBN-10 / ASIN: 1931559325
ISBN-13 / EAN: 9781931559324
Binding: Paperback
Summary: Good overall, but some serious flaws
Rating: 3
While the listing is overall a good culling of double stars from longer lists (i.e. the WDS catalog), and the comments are helpful and descriptive, there are three notable flaws not already mentioned by other reviewers. 1) The coordinates are given with no indication of the epoch. Presumably, they are 2000.0 coordinates, but that is nowhere explicitly indicated. 2) Coordinates are only listed to the nearest tenth of a minute in RA and minute of arc in dec. That's enough to make you wonder what's what in a crowded field. 3) In this era of GOTO telescopes, it's too bad the author chose to list the stars from the WDS catalog using discoverer codes (reminiscent of the now badly-outdated "Burnham's Celestial Handbooks") incommensurate with the way these stars are cataloged in common telescope pointing programs like Software Bisque's "The Sky." It's far more cumbersome to have to enter coordinates than to type a simple code like "WDS STT 34." For example, Haas uses the code "CorO" as an abbreviation for "Cordoba Observatory," whereas the WDS code (also used by The Sky) is "COO." (A web search on "CorO double star" yielded far fewer relevant hits than a search for "COO double star," which indicates to me that the latter is a more common usage
http://rapidshare.com/files/126340874/Double_Stars_for_small_telescopes_Haas.pdf.html
