The following resources are used to make these pages each month:
Unless indicated otherwise, the full color images that appear on these pages were created from second generation digital sky survey images obtained from the STScI Digitized Sky Survey. The red and blue images are combined to to make RGB color. The green channel is usually a 50-50 combination of the red and blue. Some additional processing is done to enhance the resulting color images.
Unless indicated otherwise, gray scale images that appear on these pages are obtained from the digital sky survey at SkyView.
Basic object information, eyepiece simulations, and general finder charts are derived from our SkyTools observing software.
Additional object information is often obtained from SIMBAD or NED (extragalactic objects). There are also links to professional publications on these sites which can often be found on line.
I regularly use the following books as references:
Berry, Arthur, A Short History of Astronomy, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1898-1961.
Burnham, Robert Jr., Burnham's Celestial Handbook, Dover Publications, Inc., New York, 1978.
Fraknoi, Morrison & Wolf, Voyages Through The Universe, Saunders College Publishing, 1997.
Houston, Walter Scott, Deep Sky Wonders, Sky Publishing Corp., 1999.
Mihalas & Binney, Galactic Astronomy, W. H. Freeman Co., 1981.
Osterbrock, Donold E., Astrophysics of Gaseous Nebulae and Active
Galactic Nuclei, University Science Books, Mill Valley, 1989.
