STAR MAP SKYGLOBE FULL

Celestial coordinates: Blue lines indicate right ascension in 1-hour increments and declination in 10В° increments.The ecliptic, drawn in orange, has tick marks indicating ecliptic longitude and symbols noting the Sun's location on the first day of each month. Note that, unlike some other celestial globes now on the market, this one is not illuminated - what you see is what you get.

Scale: The globe's 12-inch (30-cm) diameter provides a scale of 1В° = 0.1 inch (2.7 mm).

Here's a rundown of the carefully chosen details and characteristics: We think this is the clearest, most accurate, and most comprehensive portrayal of the night sky available in globe form. The result is a pleasing balance between providing details that observers frequently require and preserving an aesthetic rendering that showcases the inherent beauty of a star-filled night sky. Gregg fussed with the grid to ensure a perfect fit, while I obsessed over star names and other labels.ДЇinally, in early April, Sky & Telescope's Celestial Globe started rolling off the production line at Replogle. Then came the most difficult part: rendering the sky in the exacting map projection used by our partners at Replogle Globes. Roger already maintained an exhaustive database of stars and deep-sky objects, and after a few iterations we settled on the characteristics of background color, star size, and other details that looked best. Or should we use an 'inside-out' scheme, so that the constellations 'looked right' at the expense of geometry? In the end, we chose the latter. The first question proved the most basic: should we portray the sky as if Earth were at the globe's center? This 'God's-eye view' would be geometrically correct, but it would mean that all the constellations would have a left-for-right flip that would render them 'backward' as seen in the sky. And so, with a green light from management, we set to work. In early 2015, Roger and I huddled with Illustration Director Gregg Dinderman to flesh out a bold idea: could we use the S&T star charts as the basis for a globe of the entire celestial sphere? We knew the project would require lots of effort, yet the more we looked around, the more we realized that no one offered the detailed yet affordable star globe that we envisioned. This 12-inch freestanding globe allows you to explore the stars with an вЂњinside-outвЂќ perspective that closely matches what you see in the sky. Nearly a quarter century later, those distinctive all-sky charts and their derivatives used elsewhere in the magazine still help untold thousands of stargazers find their way around the night sky. The new maps also used refined 'stick figures' for the constellations that are uniquely Sky & Telescope's.

STAR MAP SKYGLOBE FULL

The new charts, in full color and far more photo-realistic, incorporated Roger Sinnott's computerized plotting and his new algorithm for sizing the 'dots' to show stars' relative brightnesses.

That's when we introduced a radically new portrayal of the month's all-sky chart, replacing black-and-white versions painstakingly drawn by the late George Lovi and carried for 25 years. Our state-of-the-art representation of the entire celestial sphere lets you explore the stars above as never before.ДЄs Sky & Telescope celebrates its 75th year of publication, we editors look back at the January 1993 issue as a milestone of particular note.

Star map skyglobe