FREE Mag 7 Star Atlas! – Original
What is it?
This project is Andrew L. Johnson’s (in his own words) “attempt to produce a free, downloadable set of high-quality star charts — the Mag-7 Star Atlas — capable of being printed at reasonable resolutions on the average home printer.” Full information (and earlier atlas versions) at Cloudy Nights website: here
The Mag-7 Star Atlas plots stars down to Magnitude 7.25, with double / multiple stars indicated by a thin horizontal bar. Plotted DSO’s (Deep Sky Objects) include all objects on the Messier list, the RASC’s finest NGC list, and the Herschell 400 list — more than 550 DSO’s in total.
The Mag-7 Star Atlas
There are 20 primary charts and one supplemental chart (11a for the Virgo Coma Berenices region) comprising the complete Mag-7 Star Atlas. Enjoy.
UPDATED – Version 2.0, April 2007
Copyright © 2005 Andrew L. Johnson
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
Milky Way Color version – ENHANCED
This free file is a “derivative work” of Andrew L. Johnson’s Mag-7 Star Atlas Project, Milky Way version, described above. This enhanced version provides three key additions:
1) A map index was created to help quickly identify the individual star chart you are looking for.
2) Blue directional arrows at the edge of each chart provide a guide to adjacent charts. Large chart numerals were also added to the lower right corner of the charts, helpful when thumbing through the pages.
3) I manually entered star names and a selection of brighter DSO common names to the charts as suggested in an email from Andrew Johnson.
The programming used to create the original Milky Way Atlas version charts is no longer available and did not include those names. This was the quickest way to add star and object names for the atlas. I wanted to share the results. I’ve included star and DSO names which I thought would be useful to amateur astronomers finding their way around the night sky.
Note: These additions were optimized for printing in color on 11 x 17-inch paper. Your results may vary. This version is offered “as is” – no warranty or guarantees. This work is under the same Creative Commons License identified and linked above.
Thanks again to Andrew L. Johnson and his Mag-7 Star Atlas Project. I hope everyone will enjoy these additions to the beautiful Mag-7 Project, Milky Way Atlas.
Mark Hoecker
May, 2017 (Updated May, 2020)
Suggestion:
A great alternative to 11 x 17-inch paper, if you have a “letter size” color printer with a manual auxiliary feed slot, is to print on “legal size” (8½ x 14-inch) heavy paper or even “card stock”.
This work is covered by the same Creative Commons License….