The Night Sky Planisphere - Japanese (Large Plastic)

The Night Sky is NOT a conventional planisphere! No flat map can remove all distortion, but with its pioneering two-sided design The Night Sky eliminates over 90% of the distortion inherent in conventional one-sided planispheres.

The latitude setting of the Japanese planisphere is 35 degreesN, which will work well for all of Japan. This is not a crude transliteration. Every aspect of the text has been critiqued and rewritten to read naturally in Japanese by two expert amateur astronomers living in Japan. Even the constellation patterns have been altered to better conform with the way they are recognized in Japan. (Sagittarius, for example, is seen as a Teapot by most Americans. However it does not look like a Japanese teapot!)

The Night Sky is Designed to be Used!

Unlike coffee-table planispheres, The Night Sky is printed with dark stars on a light background, for easy nighttime readability.
The constellations are drawn simply, emphasizing the brighter stars which makes them easy to recognize and locate with the naked eye or entry level equipment.
Coordinate grid lines are shown without being intrusive. Coordinates are shown because they can be useful for cross referencing with star atlases.
A selection of deep sky objects for binocular viewing is included. It is important to point out to beginners that the best first telescope is a pair of binoculars. You may already have what it takes to start observing tonight!
The Night Sky is larger than it looks! The map scale is larger than on similar-size planispheres because the whole sky does not have to be shown on a single map. Even the 5'' pocket version is large enough to be quite readable.