A new reference, The Cambridge Double Star Atlas (Cambridge University Press, 2009), just arrived at the magazine. Written by experienced observer James Mullaney and beautifully illustrated by renowned celestial cartographer Wil Tirion, this is a comprehensive and gorgeous work.
The Cambridge Double Star Atlas is the first modern star atlas devoted to double and multiple stars. In it, you’ll find more than 2,000 stellar pairs. The authors painstakingly labeled each with its designation. Mullaney provides a key to his labeling on pages 3–5. It takes that much space because he drew his list from 84 different discoverers, catalogs, and observatories.
The book opens with a brief introduction that I suggest everyone read. Even veteran observers will glean something new from the insights here. Next, Mullaney presents a short catalog of 133 double and multiple star showpieces. This is his “must-see” list. Mine too.
Then comes the feature you’ll use most — 30 detailed star charts by Tirion. The book ends with three appendices: a list of the constellations with the map(s) on which they appear, a table of Greek letters, and all the double stars in the book. Consider this last appendix — which spans 56 pages — as your lifetime checklist.
I’m glad to see some thought went into making this work useful to those of us who would take it into the field. The publisher spiral bound the atlas so it would lie flat when in use. The authors and publisher also used colors you can read when you shine a red light on the pages. Red is the only color of reading light to use under the sky because it best retains your eyes’ dark adaption.
Tirion also plotted many other deep-sky objects — star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies — color-coding them for easy identification. So, while the primary function of The Cambridge Double Star Atlas is double stars, the work also functions as an all-purpose observing reference.
The Cambridge Double Star Atlas is a work of enduring value. The objects it contains will be equally as good a list in 2009 as a decade from now. As a double-star observer for more than 40 years, I can’t wait to turn my 4-inch Unitron refractor toward the sky and check off the targets on Mullaney’s list. I feel a bit of a thrill thinking about how many new pairs I’ll encounter on my celestial trek.
