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Quicklink:
 Willman-Bell, Inc. homepage, creators of the
Uranometria 2000.0 atlas. |
A PERSONAL NOTE
Before the Uranometria 2000.0 atlas became available, like many deepsky
observers, I was using the old SAO Atlas. This atlas is not the most
user-friendly, but it did at least show faint stars, which made star-hopping
possible with the narrow field of the 15.5-inch f/9 I was using.
When the more slick Sky Atlas 2000.0 by Wil Tirion was published, it
was a bit of a disappointment, because even though the deepsky stuff were
labelled, it showed too few stars. Perfect for binoculars, too coarse for the
telescope. I had to wait for the fruition of an idea by someone I did not know
existed.
The Uranometria 2000.0 was the brainchild of Perry Remaklus,
president of Willmann-Bell, Inc. In the 80's, Remaklus had been using the
little-known 1944 "Webbs Atlas of the Stars" and was also familiar
with Tirion's Sky Atlas 2000.0. He thought about producing a new set of
maps, merging the best features of these earlier works into a comprehensive and
practical atlas.
Work on the new atlas started in 1983, and was to cover the sky in 160
hand-drawn charts. After further planning, it was decided to computer-plot
charts at a finer scale, producing 473 overlapping charts showing 330 000 stars,
the RNGC and a further 10 300 nonstellar objects. The atlas, produced by Wil
Tirion, George Lovi and Barry Rappaport, was named after Bayer's milestone 1603
atlas Uranometria. |
