As an amateur astronomer I had been looking around for a general purpose medium'ish-scale deepsky atlas for a long time without really finding a good one. Something that could be lying around the desk, and be my goto atlas when looking up an area to see what's around, or for high level planning before a night of observing. I found the free atlases online either to be too simplistic (too small-scale) and didn't show the brightest deepsky objects with enough detail to really be usable, or two comprehensive requiring lots of flipping through pages. I wanted something right in-between.
Finally I decided to make my own, and to also make it available for download and be printable with a home printer by anyone. In the end I created three atlases, each covering the whole night sky in 10 charts, 20 charts, and 30 charts. My primary goal was to create an atlas that doesn't give you tunnel vision when looking at a chart, while still showing more details than most atlases of the same scale by making the charts larger charts, removing the margins. and use smaller star symbols and labels in general than most atlases do.
High resolution images can be found on the information page.
10-chart Atlas
Most compact atlas of the three. Best for learning your way around the night sky. Includes all the Messier objects and a bunch more.
10 charts (double-page spreads).
Each chart 109° x 74° (for A4 w/o margins)
Stars down to magnitude 8.
Deepsky objects to magnitude 8.5.
Labels to varying magnitude.
Download A4 version (no inside overlap)
(File sizes: ~3 Mb)
High resolution images can be found on the information page.
20-chart Atlas
Good all-around Atlas that shows a lot of objects, but with a smaller scale. Good for scouting out deepsky objects to observe.
20 charts (double-page spreads).
Each chart 67° x 51°
Stars down to magnitude 9.
Deepsky objects to magnitude 12.5.
Labels to varying magnitude.
Download A4 version (no inside overlap)
(File sizes: ~5 Mb)
High resolution images can be found on the information page.
30-chart Atlas
Most detailed atlas of the three. Larger scale, more objects, most suitable for use at the eyepiece.
30 charts (double-page spreads).
Each chart 52.5° x 40°
Stars down to magnitude 9.3.
Deepsky objects to magnitude 13.
Labels to varying magnitude.
(File sizes: ~10 Mb)
Learn more about these atlases, download them, compare them to each other, and see more detailed sample images. There's also information on how they came to be, what the design criteria were, and who the author is.