Customer Reviews

The 50 Best Sights in Astronomy and How to See Them: Observing Eclipses, Bright Comets, Meteor Showers, and Other Celestial Wonders

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I was introduced to amateur astronomy about six years ago, and have recently realized that "I just enjoy looking." I didn't enjoy trying to take astro-photographs or much of the science, certainly not the chemistry! I just want the "WOW" factor, as Dean Koenig describes it. I think Fred Schaaf's recent book, 50 Best Sights in Astronomy and How to See Them, was written just for me (ISBN: 978-0-471-69657-5, $19.95 MSR in paper, available on Amazon).

My library has some 18 other books on astronomy, and I've used many - some have a large number of tables (even the chemical composition of stars, asteroids, and the like) and most have star charts, many have diagrams of both telescopes and azimuth and equatorial systems and even graphs of comparative radiations - after all, science is important. I use some of them occasionally to determine a particular fact and to confirm what I have in my telescope, but few of them (other than those with color pictures) qualify as "enjoyment reading." But Schaaf is truly the "poet of the stars" that William Sheehan has called him, and has written a book that is as enjoyable to read on a cloudy night as a rainy afternoon.

Consider his Sight 13 - Bright Comet with Long Tail: "Of all the wonders in the heavens, there are two that have inspired fear and awe more often than any others: eclipses and comets. ... There is a central reason that comets were feared by our ancestors: of all the heavens' major kinds of sights, comets seemed to be the only ones that were spectacularly unpredictable and variable." Or, his Sight 26 - The Pleiades: "Everyone is first awed b y the strangeness and splendor, then moved to affection by the gentle loveliness of the Pleiades. Almost every culture in the world and throughout history has imagined the cluster as something gentle and delicate - a group of maidens, a flock of doves, or a mother hen and its chicks."

Schaaf has organized his book by Sights from the widest to narrowest view - starting, justly, with the entire night sky, 180', as Astronomy's Greatest Sight, and moving to 100', naked-eye scans, to 50' to 15' groupings, and then to 15' to 1' and finally less than 1'. For the novice he quickly explains what is necessary, telescopes or binoculars, for enjoyable viewing and relates personal stories as to his own viewings. I think those personal stories are some of the best parts of his book (although he does include a few spectacular color plates for the truly visual of us). The method of organizing by size of the Sight works very well.

If you've forgotten the joy that can come from "just looking" at the heavens, 50 Best Sights is a wonderful way to recover the awe and appreciation for their beauty. A good pair of binoculars and a planisphere, are all that is necessary to enjoy most of Schaaf's Sights; a small quality rich field scope works for many of the rest. A "big" scope isn't necessary to "just look."