Customer Reviews

Discover the Moon

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"Discover the Moon," by Jean Lacroux and Christian Legrand, is an excellent book for someone with a new telescope. The Moon is an ideal first target. It is bright enough to be found even in a light polluted city environment, and there is more detail visible on the lunar surface than the rest of the universe combined. The authors take the observer on a night by night tour of the Moon's surface features, featuring an overview map for each night, and detailed close-ups of interesting areas. They follow the sunrise terminator as it reveals Lunar "seas," craters, mountains, valleys, rills, faults, and domes. The best feature of the book is that the overview maps and the close-up highlight areas are shown both in the inverted view presented by Newtonian (reflector) telescopes and the mirror image (left and right reversed) view presented by refractor and compound telescopes that use a star diagonal. This is important, because there is nothing more frustrating to the beginning astronomer than maps that do not match his view through the telescope. "Discover the Moon" is the ONLY book to present this invaluable feature. The book highlights over 400 lunar features for observation. Originally written in French, the translation is quite good, except for some legends embedded in illustrations. Overall, the book is an excellent value for the price, and highly recommended to any beginning lunar observer.

Discover the Moon by Jean Lacroux & Christian Legrand
Cambridge University Press, 2003, soft cover, 9" x 7", 143 pages


As books on the Moon go, this one is most unique in its concept. Besides having a bright yellow and blue cover, making it easy to spot in the day or night, the layout of the moon's images are both viewed as in a refractor/catadioptic with a star diagonal and a Newtonion telescope and on facing pages.

The book starts out with a chapter on how to use it following with explanations of moon astronomy basics. Next, it moves into equipment, when an how to observe, and basic astrophotogaphy and electronic imaging.

The main body of the book is devoted to observing the moon night by night starting after the new moon and ending with the full. Each photo of the moon's phase has a compass/telescope icon letting you know which telescope orientation you are studying. The inside front and back covers have a full view photo of the full moon in the proper orientation for each view. Each phase photo has boxes with numbers highlighting the most interesting features of that evenings view. The text corresponds with the numbers giving you a written description of the numbered feature. A yellow box in the lower right side page lists the features numerically for a quick glance of the nights highlights. In addition, most pages have a blue box giving interesting bits of lunar information.
The last chapters deals with observing the moon in its waning gibbous phase with page references as to which photos match from the waxing phases featured in the main body of the book. The book concludes with a list of lunar resources and a modest glossary of terms.

Originally published as Decouvrir la Lune in French in 2000, and translated
In to English by Cambridge University Press. This is occasionally evident in some of the captions for the illustrations that are still in French. My only wish is that it was spiral bound so that it would lay flat at the observing table. None the less, this is an outstanding book for those "lunar-tics" that can't get enough of our nearest celestial neighbor.

Jack Fox, Richmond Astronomical Society

Easy-going writing style and illustration format makes for easy tours of some of the most interesting lunar highlights from night-to-night. This is the easiest to follow of all the books on observing the moon, and even if you are using a refractor or cassegrain telescope (with reversed image viewing) you won't have any trouble navigating your way. Best introductory book.

As an amateur astronomer, I love observing and studying the moon. This book is the ultimate study guide for someone interested in learning about every major feature of the moon. The book takes the reader through a complete journey of the moon starting with a waxing crescent moon through to a full moon. Each day, those features that are evident along the terminator are displayed photographically with text describing the features. All pictures are shown in both "standard" view and mirror image view which enables the user to see the view displayed by their telescope. If you want to learn about the moon, this is the book for you.

Beginning lunar observers should have this book. Lacroux and Legrand provide a very functional set of images covering many of the major features during two weeks from crescent to full moon. The unique aspect of the book is presentation of very functional photographs presented in pairs on facing pages that show the features as seen through a Newtonian scope and a refractor with star diagonal. Identification of features are on the facing pages. For the beginning lunar observer this makes it easy to find features as the view through the eyepiece easily matches one or the other photo while at the telescope. Some of the front illustrations are still in French, but this did not detract as most of the terms have English cognates. French amateur astronomy is very strong and this translation for the English-speaking world is most welcome.

No matter what type of small telescope you might have, the pictures in this book will be helpfull. The pictures show what you will see with refractors and with reflectors. This makes the book particularly usefull to beginning astronomers. Bear in mind that reflectors turn the image upside down. While this might seem like not much of an advantage, just try to identify lunar details without this feature.

The book is well written and well translated. Some of the pictures have the original French terms which might be a small disadvantage to those who do not read French, but the text will get the idea across.

All in all, I'm glad I bought the book.