Hi, Tom,
Quite a group of luminaries, so to speak. John Sanford did a very nice book
on deep sky observing, complete with very nice small Tirion charts, (and
,unfortunately, almost unreadable constellation photographs, like the early
editions of Menzel) called Observing the Constellations. Somehow I wound up
with two copies. I have always liked Mullaney's columns, quite inspiring, and
I enjoy his new book Celestial Harvest. Glen Chaple's work was helpful and
simpatico for the new observer, though more recently Sue French's columns in
Sky & Telescope are much broader and heavily researched. I think Glen was
aiming for users of three inch refractors, and Sue was aiming for users of four
inch refractors, a big difference.
I have packed away the Star & Sky somewhere and when and if I find it, I
will post an answer to your question as to when it ended.
If one had several thousand subscribers at say $25 average, that was a lot
of money in those days.
Clear skies,
Bill Meyers

Tom Polakis wrote:

On Thu, 25 Mar 2004 22:47:17 -0500, Bill Meyers
wrote:

Hi, Tom,
Ah, sadness, sadness. I liked the early issues Star & Sky a lot, and so I
sent in money for a three year subsubscription. I heard a rumor that the
publisher fled to Buenos Aires with the deposits? Is this just a rumor or
is there some truth to it?

I heard exactly that same rumor, and from a very good source.

Check out some of these names of contributors to Star & Sky, when it hit
its stride in the September 1980 issue.

Terence Dickinson - Editor

Jay Gunter, David Levy, Ron Morales, James Mullaney, James Oberg, Joe Rao,
John Sanford - Contributing Editors (okay, Richard C. Hoagland is in there
as well, apparently before he wigged out)

Rolf Meier - nice article on comet hunting

Robert Provin and Brad Wallis - RTMC 1980 recap

Glen Chaple - regular column on small scope astronomy

Leo Henzl - regular column on astrophotography

Not what you'd call a bunch of hack writers... My last issue was February
1981. Was that the end?

Tom