When we look up at the sky, we often wonder what we are actually seeing. What are beautiful constellations for sky enthusiasts are just random, incomprehensible patterns of stars for many people. Not everyone can even point out the Big Dipper in the sky, recognising at most the characteristic shape of its most famous part – the Big Dipper.
To orientate yourself correctly in the sky and identify individual stars and constellations, you need some knowledge and experience. If we do not have this knowledge, we can now use special electronic devices and software, but also traditional rotating sky maps or sky atlases. This is still not an easy task if we are trying to recognise the sky for the first time and our knowledge on the subject is still in its infancy.
The Sky Atlas 2000.0 was created mainly for beginner sky enthusiasts who are just starting their adventure with astronomy and whose first goal is to learn about the cosmos around us. For this purpose, both the scale of the Atlas and the number of stars shown on its individual maps have been carefully selected. It corresponds to the number of stars visible to the naked eye in ideal atmospheric conditions and away from Earth's lights that brighten the night sky. In practice, we are usually unable to see the faintest stars in the Atlas with the naked eye. However, with simple binoculars or a telescope, we can see far beyond the stars marked in the Atlas.
