4 replies to this topic

[pulecz]

Hello everyone,

This is a combined layout of an "universal" map of the whole sky. It was designed to be double-sided and folded, this layout just breaks it all and puts all the elements onto one page.

http://www.geographi.../fla/obloha.htm

My first post here, but show no mercy in your comments.

[Pete]

I like it. I don't understand a word of it and I'm not an astronomer but I like it a lot!

The night time colour scheme fits the theme of the map perfectly - even with the limited colour palette everything is clear and readable without resorting to over the top contrast.

I'd maybe think about moving some of the constellation names so they don't overlap with the stars - Telescopium, Andromaeda and maybe a couple of others - and possibly mask the ecliptic where the line intersects with constellation names.

[DaveB]

I'll echo what Pete said. Very pleasing and easy to read design, even though I don't understand it and I know very little about astronomy. I like the "hand" scale bar.
Would this map be used out in the field under low light conditions? If so, is it readable in those conditions? (I guess people taking the map out in the field would bring flashlights with them)

Nice work! (sorry, couldn't find anything to be merciless about... )

[Jimbo]

It's a nice map of the constellations, but because it's in a different language I can only speculate that what we are seeing is information based the time of year, & the position of the stars. It even has a chart showing the size of the stars, personally I wouldn't want our sun to be a giant since it would be near the end of life as gravity would be far weaker in the centre ready to collapse either into a black hole or a pulsar sort of like PSR 1257+12.

[Emily Martin]

Very nice indeed

The layout is great and the simple, clean design makes it very attractive to look at. Much better than stuffy textbook illutrations. The silhouette in the corner is a nice touch. The percieved overlap of larger magnitude stars with brighter ones works well for me and

The only other comments I have are nitpicky opinions, but you asked for no mercy, so here they are. I agree that the ecliptic could be masked where it is overlain by constellation names (or asterisms, to give them thier astronomical term). However, I'd consider moving some of them a little, for example Sagittarius and Corvus in the bottom panel, so they don't overlap stars, and shift Ursa Minor left a little so it's not on top of the declination line.

In the southern hemisphere, the declinations should be negative, with the South celestial pole being at -90 degrees. I see why you put the line where it is - to match with the other circle - but it seems to pass through the densest region of stars. Swinging it around to 4 or 5 hours wuold make it easier to see and read.

In the lower panel, I love the flow of the ecliptic and the Milky Way. Since the labels are so unobtrusive, I'd consider numbering the bottom and right sides as well and including the degrees symbol. Now I look, I can't see any units labelled for the right ascension, although that may be in the text. Still, for ease of reference (and those in the audience who don't speak the language ), I would add 'hours' or 'h' to the maps, possibly just once, next to zero if it makes it look cluttered.

Using a hand for scale is a very useful trick. What about giving the width of a finger as well for smaller guesstimates?

The only other thing I can think of is that the blobs in the constellations you've used for scale, Ursa Major and Crux with Hadar and Alpha Centauri, look a different size to what they are in the maps. It could just be my eyes, as it's the end of a long day. Oh, and I've just seen Velky Vuz (please excuse the lack of accents and twiddly bits) on the northern map. It's the only Czech word in there, and looks a bit out of place with everything else having latin names. What does it mean?

Happily our Sun is not a giant yet but a main sequence star. It is about 4.5 billion years old and will turn into a red giant in another 5 billion. Then it will blow its outer layers off into a beautiful, gaseous cloud and shrink to become a stable, long-lived white dwarf star.

Hasdrubal, the blobs don't show the size of the stars but their magnitude, or brightness, which is measured on an odd scale where brighter means a smaller number, extending into negative numbers. A full moon, for example, has a magnitude of -12.6.