Norton’s Star Atlas became highly popular because of its convenient arrangement of dividing the sky into six vertical slices, or gores, like portions of a globe.
For the first edition, Norton based his charts on the Uranométrie Générale star catalogue compiled by the Belgian astronomer Jean-Charles Houzeau.
For the 5th edition of the Atlas, published in 1933, Norton completely redrew the charts, despite now suffering from severely impaired vision in his left eye due to a blood clot behind the retina.
In addition to the charts, Norton’s Star Atlas also contained a reference section featuring practical information and data of particular interest to observers.
For this edition the charts were replotted and the reference section heavily revised to reflect the latest advances in amateur astronomy.