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Sky & Telescope published a nice celestial globe (see image below; the deep blue, almost black globe). This was produced under the supervision of Roger Sinnott. Notice that this globe has the constellations oriented from the "inside" which I highly recommend. Most traditional star globes instead display the constellations as if the celestial sphere is real, and the observer has somehow escaped outside of it into the quitessence realm. This is fine for a demented "purist" but just awful for someone trying to learn the constellations and even for those who already have some knowledge of the stars. The "purist" celestial sphere is, quite simply, backwards. Can you read text backwards? Yes... sort of, right? It's the same with the patterns of the stars.

The Freiberger globe, images below, is a very fine product, but as you can see in the catalog page, it is strictly for the wealthy astronomy/celestial navigation enthusiast. An interesting issue for this globe as well as some of those old Soviet globes is that they were produced by copying masters dating back as far as the 1930s. In other words, the astronomy is nearly a century antiqued. This changes a few details, for example Alkaid may be labeled as Benetnasch, a formerly popular name, and Alnair might be spelled Al Na'ir, a choice only recently obsoleted by the IAU. A century also implies nearly one degree of precession, and that's enough to cancel the implied precision of those finely divided scales and pointers. In practice, it's no big deal. But if it's no big deal, then it's also not worth the high prices, except as nerd-fetish collectible.

Finally, if you want a nice cheap star globe, you can easily make your own for less than five dollars, assuming you have a cardboard box for free and assuming you don't need to buy markers. See my "blue" globe below. Just visit a local market, buy a childrens' ball, draw on it, and stick it in a box. It works beautifully. But it's not quite as pretty as that Freibergische beastie, is it?

Frank Reed
Clockwork Mapping / ReedNavigation.com
Conanicut Island USA

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