Mr Al-Mansour went -
>Mr. Bonanno, the creator of MegaStar, modified his program so that
>he could bring up one of the DSS images and then move and rotate the
>DSO symbol to match what the DSS image showed. Basically when the
>symbol was manipulated so was the underlying data in MegaStar. So I
>would guess that the newest version of MegaStar ought to be just as
>accurate as UM2000 since the underlying data is the same.
Cragin and Bonanno are the makers of the Deep Sky Field Guide,
UM2000's volume 3. Now the whole pattern falls into place. Again, on
amastro, which really is the Big Kid astro list, DSFG has gotten to
be an automatically understood acronym. I'd been wondering for over a
year why the digital-database dudes and ducesses on amastro tend to
be using MegaStar rather than The Sky.
When I get to the level of observing expertise where I need more than
Uranometria I'll let you know. There are some 30 detail charts of
Abell clusters and other tight galaxy fields, a wonderland.
My obvious point here, for folks who are wondering what they'll need
to become serious observers, is that there is a wealth of
top-of-the-line resource in paper atlases.
Now we just need some sky. Eridanus is teasing me from afar.
-- Jamie Dillon <*> speech pathologist jamie_dillon@No-Spam " ... " - Harpo Marx