Books >> Astronomy and Astrophysics >> Messier Album| Peripatus Home Page Books >> Astronomy and Astrophysics >> Messier Album |
Updated: 26 Dec 2001 |
ISBN 0-9333-4604-2
One of the earlier (and seemingly very popular, running to at least five reprintings) observers companions specialising in the Messier objects.
The features which set it apart from similar books, are (1) an extraordinarily scholarly analysis of Messier's own observations; (2) a complete 2/3 scale facsimile of Messier's Connaissance des Temps catalogue; (3) each object is accompanied by a (hand-lettered) finder-chart, and is (4) illustrated by Mallas's hand-drawings (made with a 4-inch refractor) and Kreimer's photographs (made with a pretty sophisticated – but nevertheless "amateur" – dry ice-cooled 12.5 inch refractor), both monochrome.
These days we have become conditioned to expect lavish, full-colour, professional "David Malin" quality photographs in our hobby literature, so the illustrations in Mallas & Kreimer come to us as something of a shock. How easy it is to forget, when we look with our own eyes, whether we are looking through a professional instrument at our local observatory or simply browsing with binoculars, that we do not see the Trifid (M20) glowing in beautifully contrasting purple and red, we do not perceive the Orion Nebula (M42) as a riot in orange, we do not notice the cloudy wisps among the Pleiades (M45) are a dazzling electric blue. In fact, we see them as pale smudges, pretty much as Mallas & Kreimer show them.
So you pays your money and you takes your choice. As a viewing companion, Mallas & Kreimer conveys a good appreciation of what you're looking for and what you can expect to see once you've found it with a typical amateur instrument. Just don't expect gasps of wonder from family and friends if they should happen to flick through the pages. (To be fair, I should add that the reprinting I have, the 5th, includes about 30 colour photographs in a kind of appendix. These are also amateur – albeit pretty advanced amateur – images submitted by are variety of contributors, using instruments ranging from 6 to 12 inches or so.)
Recommendation: Recommended.
Look and Feel: Hardback, good quality paper and reproduction, although the delightfully whimsical hand-lettering and monochrome illustrations conspire with our modern conditioning to make it appear otherwise.
| Peripatus Home Page Books >> Astronomy and Astrophysics >> Messier Album |
Contact me. |