This was one of the very first “serious” astronomy books I bought when I first got the Celestron Nexstar 11 GPS. Initially, as I only used the Nexstar for observing, the title of this book seemed relevant to my needs – yes I bought the book solely on the title!
When I received the book, I’ll be honest, I was very disappointed. No colour pictures and the few black and white diagrams did not impress me, the book sat unused on my shelf for many months.
Fast-forward to when I started imaging seriously!
Now I’m imaging I use the NGC/IC Project site a lot since I want to be sure on the facts regarding any new objects. I noticed something interesting at the bottom of virtually every NGC object description – there is nearly always a reference to Luginbuhl & Skiff!!
I now pick up the book which has sat completely unused on my shelf for a very long time and finally realise exactly what I have here. This book is an absolute gold-mine of the deep-sky objects to be found in the 68 constellations North of Declination -50 degrees. This amounts to something like 2,050 objects including their dimensions, magnitudes, orientations and angular distances, all very useful data for finding new imaging subjects.
So, although this may be titled an observer’s book, it is possibly even more useful for the deep-sky imager looking for new off-the-beaten-track objects. This is a truly superb general reference book for Northern Hemisphere deep-sky objects.
You can purchase this book at Amazon or any other good book retailer.
Observing Handbook and Catalogue of Deep-Sky Objects by Christian B. Luginbuhl & Brian A. Skiff
Cambridge University Press 1998 Paperback
ISBN 0 521 62556 4