Customer Reviews

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Astronomy (2nd Edition)

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I am a 13-year-old who has been interested in the astronomical sciences for many years. I've read many books on astronomy and cosmology, but the Complete Idiot's Guide to Astronomy is the best I've read for quick facts, and not just a bunch of words jumbled up that makes absolutely no sense at all. This book discusses many great things. Such as:

~discussions elaborating on important events, projects, isasues, or people in astronomy

~definitions of key terms used in astronomy

~startling astronomical facts and amazing trivia

~highlights important statistics, scientific laws and principles, measurements, and mathmatical formulas.

And all of that information just comes out of small boxes on the sides of the pages!!! So you can just imagine how much other information comes out of the actual text of the book!!!

Great read for anyone iterested in astronomy or interested in becoming part of this amazing and ancient form of science as a profession..like me!!!

Astronomy is more than just peering through a telescope, and, fortunately for both new and veteran stargazers, Alpha Books has published "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Astronomy." CIGA introduces the complex and potentially intimidating science and hobby with logic, clarity, and humor.

Authors DePree and Axelrod survey astronomy in six user-friendly sections describing: our place in space; telescopes and observing; our solar system; stars; galaxies; and, the universe. While other astronomy books touch on telescopes in passing, CIGA offers an instructive chapter devoted to the various types of telescopes and their pros and cons.

Very useful features include numerous boxes that define space jargon (Star Words), provide useful and entertaining facts (Astro Bytes, Astronomer's Notebook, and Close Encounters), and summarize the crucial chapter points (The Least You Need to Know).

My only regret is that The Complete Idiot's Guide to Astronomy was not yet produced when I first become interested in sky watching.

There is truly a great wealth of information in this book, ranging from a "history" of astronomy profiling the great astronomers of the past and their accomplishments, to what kinds of things (stars, planets, etc) you should search for in the sky, the kind of telescope you should buy (if you are so inclined), along with information about our moon, our solar system and beyond. Also included is information about the different kinds of stars out there (everything from "white dwarves" to "red giants"), how the universe was created and how many other potential universe there are "out there." Particularly interesting to me were the descriptions of the various planets and also how "black holes" get formed.

The book's appendices also contain a wealth of information, a list of upcoming solar and lunar eclipses, a list of constellations, and other sources of information. Anyone with an interest in astronomy, be it an "amateur astronomer" setting up his telescope to search the skies or a lay person like me who wonders what other worlds are like will enjoy this book.

While the "tone" of the book was written for us non-astronomers in mind, I could've used more illustrations--even pencil drawing ones--for many of the concepts such as angular size.

Being a visual person, I probably should have looked at it first before ordering it. Someone who isn't as visual will probably do well with this book, as it's filled with a lot of excellent information throughout.

1-24-02 update: After posting my review on this book, Professor Chris DePree e-mailed me and apologized for my problems with his book, explained why there were so few illustrations (budget constraint), and asked for any more comments so they could improve the 2nd edition. Wow, was I impressed!

This book could be called the "Swiss Army Knife" of Astronomy
books. Rich, complete. Has much to offer the novice and pro alike.
From the History of Astronomy and its many essentric
players, to the use of todays powerful Radio telescopes.
This is not a dry Technical manual but a book packed with all
the words and tools of modern Astronomy, liberally
sprinkled with humor and trivia. Want to know who what when and
where? Or how far, how big and how hot? When I have a question
this is the book I reach for. From backyard to Hubble, its all in
here. Chris DePree's love of Astronomy
(and teaching it!) shows in this wonderful book. Cudos!

I own dozens of amateur astronomy books. Almost all of them are "hard." Why are they so difficult? They are difficult to the beginning amateur because most writers of these books are professional astronomers or physicists: pros who seem to get carried away with irrelevant points during the writing of these guides. I could see this every time I looked in many of the books: too much talk about the celestial sphere, page after page of mythology, endless telescope diagrams, famous science battles, mind-numbing physics, & so on. The meat of the matter was lost.

Not so with this book. De Pree & Axelrod - two pros - finally got it right. The Complete Idiot's Guide to Astronomy is different from all the rest. Snappily-written, fun, & easy to understand, this guide sticks to all the important points of amateur astronomy. This book really respects the amateur astronomer. It has been in my library for about 5 years, & I return to it frequently.

Buy this book if you want to painlessly learn amateur astronomy. You won't be disappointed.

It had been 20 years since I'd read an astronomy text, and I wanted to get back up to date, so I tried this book, and it was a good choice. This would make a good, first book on astronomy for almost anybody. It's clearly and concisely written, and it requires almost no math and only a basic understanding of physics. (The purists and techies might object to that, but remember, this is an "idiot's guide." :-)) It could probably be used by a high school student. The basic concepts and information on astronomy are discussed without getting very technical.

The authors also discuss the history of astronomy from its earliest origins to the most recent theories. The different areas of astronomy, such as planetary astronomy, stellar astronomy, observational astronomy, astrophysics, and cosmology are all covered in detail in separate chapters. The coverage is very good and new results up through the late 90s and turn of the new millenium, including recent probe missions, telescropic findings, are included. I was out of date around 1980 so I was especially interested in the more recent developments of the last 10 years, which as I said is covered quite well.

I noticed a few things had changed since I was last reading up on astronomy. Back then, the universe was thought to be as old as 24 billion years, but today it's only thought to be about 14.5 billion years old. There were several methods of estimating the age of the universe, which were the recessional velocities of the galaxies, the age of the oldest, reddest globular clusters circling our Milky Way galaxy, and the 25 centimeter background radiation. The oldest figure of 24 billion years was from the globular cluster research done by the late, great Harlow Shapley early in the last century. But anyway, apparently recent research has revised than down a good 10 billion years.

I also notice that modern astronomy texts don't seem to have as many beautiful color plates of nebulae and galaxies as in the old days, but no doubt that relates to keeping costs down. The color photos in this book, although fewer in number, often come from the Hubble Space Telescope, and the ones of the Hubble Deep Field which contain 10,000 galaxies are truly awe-inspiring and are better than anything they could get back then, so the books make up for the lack of quantify perhaps with better quality.

Since I was out of date, the chapters I was most interested in were the last two on galactic evolution and cosmology, in which many of the most important new theoretical and observational developments are discussed. Back in my day, it was thought the universe was expanding but could eventually brake to a halt and start contracting, as in the oscillating universe theory, and it was thought this cycle could take 70 billion years. Now it's thought that the expansion is actually still gathering momentum and speed, which was a surprising result to me.

The book concludes with an appendix and glossary of astronomical terms. Overall a very nicely done, well written and readable account of the subject for the beginning student.

I seem to always find the Complete Idiots Guides to be better written, easier to understand, and a better resource that the Dummies books. At a lower price too. These are great reference books and you don't have to read the whole book to find any information you are looking for. It's not a book on how to use a telescope, nor is it an advanced physics book on astronomy, but it will help you understand astronomy in all of it's facets. Every ameture astronomer should have this book. It is much more fun observing the stars when you have an idea about what you are looking at. This book should also help tie togeather various aspects of astronomy for any taking an astronomy course. Well written, easy to understand, with loads of information in an easy to access form.

My astronomy instructor recommended this book.
Makes the universe understandable for laymen.
Fourth edition now comes with CD.

Reading this book helped me decide on what telescope to buy, where to find the most popular stellular sights, and how to be a smart and patient astonomer. It is in lamen's terms, so it was very easy to comprehend. I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to pursue astronomy, or even anyone who just wants to learn a bit more about our universe.