Sky & Telescope - August 2021 - 66

BOOK REVIEW by Jerry Oltion & Howard Banich
The NGC at Your Fingertips
A COMPREHENSIVE FIELD GUIDE TO THE NGC
Written and published by Bhavesh
Jivan-Kala Parekh
pdxastronomy.com
Vols. 1 & 2 (Autumn/Winter): $125
Vols. 3 & 4 (Spring/Summer): $125
All four volumes: $225
THE NEW GENERAL CATALOGUE OF
NEBULAE AND CLUSTERS OF STARS
(NGC) includes nearly every deep-sky
object an amateur astronomer will
observe over the course of a lifetime.
Not all, but the vast majority of interesting
objects in the sky have NGC
numbers. Some are bright, some are
dim, and some are practically invisible.
Wouldn't it be nice to have a photographic
fi eld guide so you could tell
ahead of time what you're seeking, what
the star fi eld around it looks like, and
how easy or hard it might be to fi nd?
Portland, Oregon amateur Bhavesh
Jivan-Kala Parekh has compiled just
such a guide. His Comprehensive Field
Guide to the NGC provides photos of
7,047 confi rmed NGC objects in a beautiful
four-volume set.
Each spiral-bound volume is printed
on waterproof paper. (When asked how
waterproof, Parekh replied, " This is
water proof paper, baby!!!! You can dunk
it in a bucket of water, take it out, and
wipe it dry with a cloth. " ) The sheet
size is 11 x 17 inches, so each of the 12
Digitized Sky Survey (DSS) images per
page is a generous 2.6-inch square.
The images have black stars on a
white background, which minimizes
the need for light to see them well at
night, and they're rotated 180 degrees
to match the view in a Newtonian telescope.
They're labeled with magnitude,
object type, object size, fi eld size, right
ascension and declination, other catalog
designations, common names, and even
surface brightness on many objects.
In addition to the photos, each
volume contains an index to the entire
set, cross-referenced to the Messier,
Caldwell, Herschel 400, and Arp
catalogs. Each also features a constellation
map with a page index, a sky-zone
planning tool, and a list of duplicate
entries. Volumes 1 and 2 cover autumn
and winter, volumes 3 and 4 spring and
summer. It's generally only necessary to
take two volumes at a time to the fi eld
to observe.
Part of the fun, though, is to
fl ip through the pages during the day
and decide which objects you want to
view at night. The DSS images of each
NGC object are a pleasure to look at,
and it's exciting to wonder how much of
them you might see in your telescope.
For his fi rst night out with the Guide,
 A Comprehensive Field Guide to the NGC
comes in four beautiful spiral-bound volumes.
66 AUGUST 2021 * SKY & TELESCOPE
Howard decided to observe the planetary
nebula NGC 2242 in Auriga and
saw in the Interstellarum Deep-Sky Atlas
that NGCs 2281 and 2303 were nearby.
Opening up volume 1 of the Guide to
page 30, he found these objects lined
up side-by-side at the bottom of the
page. Nice! This doesn't happen every
 Each entry includes a photo and a great deal
of information about the object.
time, but it did show the organizational
power of the Guide while exploring a
region of the sky.
That was on a clear, mid-January
night earlier this year, which in western
Oregon means heavy dew. As a test,
Howard left the page open to the sky for
about four hours, and it was drenched
when he brought it back inside. He
casually wiped it off with a towel and
let it air-dry overnight. The paper was
ever so slightly wrinkled, but the images
and print were as good as new.
Of course, you could pull up DSS
images of every NGC object on a
smartphone if you wished, but that's
not always possible or even desirable
out in the fi eld. Plus, the images would
never be as well organized or as readily
accessible as in Bhavesh Parekh's Comprehensive
Field Guide to the NGC. This is
a well-made, intelligently laid-out, and
professionally produced four-volume
set that nicely fi lls a niche for those of
us who prefer not to rely on electronics
while observing.
 As residents of soggy western Oregon,
Contributing Editors JERRY OLTION
and HOWARD BANICH understand the
importance of waterproof paper.
http://www.pdxastronomy.com
Sky & Telescope - August 2021

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