Astronomy Magazines....

Hi,

IMHO S&T is the best regardless of your level, next would be Astronomy Now followed by Astronomy.

To be honest I don't rate the others at all.

Hi,
Sky & Telescope is by a light year the best astro mag out there.
The one thing is that there is alot of adds, but I use them to keep myself uptodate with the latest and greatest equipment out there, so to me this is a good thing.

Only A&S right now (i agree its a BIT thin) but i've been looking at the S&T website the last few weeks and i likes what i see, so i am gonna subscribe to that one also.

Might even subscribe to Sky at night cuz we all grew up with the show. It is the foundation on which all of us base our hobby.

Hi all,

I'd concur with Sky and Telescope being a good read but have a look at the thread that's been running in the Stellar Media forum on Cloudy Nights ... www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat...2090098/Main/2012672

A lot of the discussion on the CN site has been about how recent S & T issues have dipped in quality of content. To be honest, a lot is down to the vast resources now available for people to glean material from. Also, as your experience grows in the hobby you'll tend to gravitate towards certain topics of interest so some issues will not be of much interest.

Anyways, back to the topic of THIS thread

I see that it costs MORE to subscribe to Sky at Night than to buy the magazine off the shelf (in Ireland). That's a real gripe some people had with the publishers previously but all they got was a standard response re: postage ... blah ... blah ...

I also subscribe to the French magazine Ciel et Espace which is quite a good publication and has a number of interesting articles each month. I was thinking of switching to Astronomie next time round though because that magazine is more for the observer.

The number of magazines is bewildering though when you take into account the publications offered by various organisations such as the BAA, Society for Popular Astronomy, Webb Society, etc. Add to this on-line newsletters, club magazines, and astronomy topics in New Scientist/Scientific American/Popular Science, and there's no shortage of astronomy news! Don't get me started listing the professional journals either :lol: :lol: :lol:

So, after all that, what to go for?

I'd favour Sky and Telescope over Astronomy because of the better in-depth coverage of both reviews and observing topics. Astronomy is good though in delivering astronomy concepts and far more visually appealing than S&T. Be warned though that generally the sky notes for the month are pitched at observers in the US.

I'd pick up Sky at Night on occasions if the content is of interest. The sky notes section is very good and the overall feel of the magazine is that of a friend guiding through the hobby of astronomy. Astronomy Now can have very good articles but recently each issue seems to have stuck together from loads of completely disparate parts. What I mean is that it gives the impression of being disorganised. It could definitely do with a re-styling.

atb,

John

Don't get me started listing the professional journals either :lol: :lol: :lol:

My gripe with them is that they charge a fortune! I've had online access to most through college for the past few years which was great. Buts they a resource that is very intentionally put out of the reach of those not working in academia.

The best you can do without educational access is to brows the contents/abstracts and then try and get a preprint if there is a particularly interesting article. Pain in the backside! Though some journals at least have the abstracts on RSS feeds now.

Cheers,
~Al

A lot of the discussion on the CN site has been about how recent S & T issues have dipped in quality of content. To be honest, a lot is down to the vast resources now available for people to glean material from. Also, as your experience grows in the hobby you'll tend to gravitate towards certain topics of interest so some issues will not be of much interest.

John,

I just received the latest issue and was absolutely HORRIFIED at the quality of the paper. The photos in the gallery section look like &#^%$ thanks to the very low quality paper. I swear the paper used looks like toilet paper!

I have been a longterm subscriber to both S&T and Astronomy and, regrettably, I have also noted a degradation in S&T the past few years ... and which seems to be getting worse and worse.

I realize that we subscribe to a magazine for the articles and not the paper but the "quality" of the latest issue just floored me!