Atlas of the Messier Objects

Ronald Stoyan was born in Dresden in 1972. A geographer by education, he became interested in visual astronomical observation at the age of 16. He has since developed an international reputation as an experienced planetary and deep-sky observer and drawer. He was the founding director of the German deep-sky organization 'Fachgruppe Deep-Sky' and served as Jupiter and Saturn recorder for the German-speaking planetary observers. For twenty-four years he was editor-in-chief of interstellarum, one of the country's main astronomical magazines, which he founded in 1994, and senior editor for its successor, Abenteuer Astronomie. In 2000, he founded Oculum-Verlag as Germany's first exclusive astronomical publishing company. He has authored and coauthored more than a dozen books on practical astronomy, the best known of which are the interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas and its companion, the interstellarum Deep Sky Guide. Klaus-Peter Schroeder is a professor of astrophysics at the Universidad de Guanajuato, Mexico. His research is focused on stellar activity, spectroscopy, stellar evolution and red giant stars, using the TIGRE robotic telescope since 2013. His work has been published in over 100 articles in refereed astrophysical journals of high impact. As an avid amateur astronomer and photographer since youth, he has also written several books on astrophotography and is a regular contributor to amateur astronomy magazines.