I remember seeing a star “chart” that was like a plastic beach ball collapsed around a rigid ring. It looked sort of like a diaphragm, but was about a foot across, and there were constellations printed on it. The concave side simulated the dome of the night sky, and you could move the plastic around to adjust it for anywhere in the world. Does anyone remember this thing?
What was it called?
Are they still made, and where can I get one?
Did any of you ever use it, and was it a decent product, or was it cheap and annoying? Would I be better off with some other form of star chart/planisphere/etc?
I think Sengkelat means a beachball like this, only clear, and with an internal plastic ring you can set to the local horizon.
If they still make them, they’re hiding them somewhere. I’m not finding any.
If your goal is to learn the constellations, you could do worse than Edmund Scientific’s Star and Planet Locator. It’s not flashy, but it is highly portable. Many other companies make similar products.
It was something like you linked to, Squink, opaque and dark blue…but imagine it having a hard plastic ring inside, and then sucking all the air out of the beach ball, so it’s hemispherical. The plastic would still slide around to allow the ring to represent the appropriate horizon though.
In the meantime, I picked up H. A. Rey’s The Stars: A New Way to See Them (new as in 1952, of course) and it’s pretty nice, but a little big to stuff in a backpack unless you’re definitely planning on stargazing.
That’s a pretty cool product, Mr. Miskatonic, but no, that’s not it. The thing I’m talking about was made of flexible plastic, the only visible part being the “beach ball” part, and the hard ring inside being the only other part at all.
Having spent time north of, next to, and well south of the equator, I liked the idea of an item that could be configured for any latitude. But I’m getting the feeling that they just don’t make them anymore. They must not have been all that popular.
It can be configured because it’s a deflated soft plastic sphere, and has all the information of the entire sky, but the part that you can’t see from your position is on the convex side.
As an alternate explanation, the thing is a deflated ball, which naturally forms a hemisphere, right? But the hemisphere can be formed with the equator running around the rim (which is appropriate if you’re viewing from one of the poles) or it can be deflated with the poles on the rim and the equator running along the inside and outside middle of the hemisphere. In this object’s case, there’s no inflating or deflating, you just slide the plastic against itself to position the pole at the appropriate place.