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Session 30 - Amateurs & Professionals: Collaborators in the New Age of Electronic Astronomy.
Display session, Tuesday, June 10
South Main Hall,
In a unique collaboration with the European Space Agency's Hipparcos project, a team of dedicated amateurs at Sky amp; Telescope has created a far-reaching observing tool for amateurs and professionals alike: the Millennium Star Atlas. This poster talk will explain how and why we did it. Inviting use at the eyepiece with its book format, the atlas stands far above earlier ones in completeness and uniformity to its brightness cutoff for stars, in this case magnitude 11. In addition, the 1,548 charts offer many advantages over photographic atlases. All star magnitudes are essentially Johnson V, and virtually all the nonstellar objects in the atlas are identified by type and designation. The map projection is optimized for minimal distortion, and the chart scale is 100 arcsec/mm, matching that at the focal plane of an 8-inch f/10 Schmidt-Cassegrain. Distance labels and proper-motion arrows alert users to widely spaced star pairs and streams traveling together. Many thousands of already known and newly discovered double and variable stars are depicted with informative symbols for anyone wishing to investigate their nature further.
