So I wanted a collection of star charts for my astrophotography habit. Bob has the SkyAtlas [which, due to a questionable choice in ligatures on the front cover looks a lot like the Skatlas] 2000.0. It's a great chart, with huge pages and full-color non-stellar object symbols, etc. However, it's really unwieldy out in the field. It has a huge footprint when it is open and takes up a lot of space. We basically need most of a table to use it. The chart's limiting magnitude is 8.5, which means it has 81,312 stars listed.

I decided to pick up a copy of Uranometria 2000.0, the major competitor to Skatlas. The limiting magnitude on Uranometria is 9.75, which means it has over 280,000 stars. It has a much more reasonable footprint (it consits of two hardcover books, each with a 9"x12" footprint). As a result of the considerably smaller page size and the increased resolution (18.5mm/° vs 8.2mm/° for the Skatlas) , there are many more charts - 220 vs. 26. Each chart covers a relatively small area of sky, but with this book it is the detail which is important.

The Uranometria is a really great reference book and I'm glad I got it. The only problem is that I bought "Like New" used copies from Amazon 3rd party sellers, and one of them neglected to mention that they were selling me the first edition from 1988 rather than the current second edition from 2001. The second edition includes a new spatial decomposition, so the chart numbers don't line up and the index (only available in volume 1) doesn't work for anything in my copy of volume 2.

Between the volumes, editions, years of publishing, and the stellar reference year in the title, this can be rather confusing: I have Uranometria 2000.0 Volume I Second Edition (2001) and Uranometria 2000.0 Volume II First Edition (1988). The two do not play well together. I'll probably have to go buy the second edition of volume 2 and sell my first edition. Oh well.