The Cambridge photographic star atlas

This book is quite distinctive. It is dominated by 82 star charts. Each chart includes a negative image of a section of the sky on a left-facing page, so it looks like a traditional astronomical atlas, such as Uranometria 2000.0 (2nd ed., CH, Jun'02, 39-5793). This left page contains markings that indicate different types of nebulae, clusters, galaxies, and variable stars. The right-facing page of each chart is a clean, unmarked, positive color image of the exact same section of the sky. Mellinger (Central Michigan Univ.) and Stoyan (editor in chief, Interstellarum magazine; coauthor, Atlas of the Messier Objects, CH, Jun'09, 46-5574) provide a short introduction to the work. They explain the process and the equipment they used to create the images, which was not an easy task; it took the authors two years to complete the project. The final page of the introduction includes a list of over a dozen useful references; a nice index of objects completes the work. The Photographic Atlas of the Stars by H. Arnold, P. Doherty, and P. Moore (1997) is similar, but the charts in The Cambridge Photographic Star Atlas are much more detailed. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates, professionals/practitioners, and general audiences. J. R. Kraus University of Denver