That atlas was sitting on a bookshelf grinning at me when I had put
a tripod on the binocs, late summer '98, and started getting past
naked eye observing. Have had that book time out of mind, so it's
definitely my first atlas. Used the charts to start getting oriented
to the deepsky, first around Cassiopeia, Perseus and Auriga.
A copy always is in the car handy for questions at work or wherever,
and an older copy resides in the astro gear box. So it's the one
atlas I always have on hand. Very useful for a pocket reference. Jay
Pasachoff gets credit for the modern edition; he's a prof at
Williams College, whose mascot is the purple cow. He's also a major
solar eclipse junkie.
Jerry's right, the selection of objects is way less judicious than in
other atlases. Just because a galaxy is charted in that little book
doesn't mean it's an easy find.
-- Jamie Dillon <*> <mavericks@No-Spam> http://www.winepress.com/jd1.htm "Never eat at a place called Mom's, never play cards with a man named Doc, and never get into bed with someone whose problems are worse than yours." - Nelson Algren