Customer Reviews

The Ever-Changing Sky: A Guide to the Celestial Sphere

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am a retired physicist and astronomer and I have seen many textbooks in astronomy, popular as well as written for the serious student, and in more languishes than just English. This book may well be the best, it deserves more than 5 stars. It covers an amazing range: Spherical astronomy, astronomical mechanics and the motions of the heavenly bodies, planetary science, astrophysics, and instruments on just 500 pages. The book even includes atmospheric phenomenons such as sun dogs, halos, rainbows, which are generally omitted in the popular astronomical literature. The author manages to explain with lucid clarity difficult details without any use of mathematics. I checked several rarely well explained points in the field of spherical astronomy and astronomical mechanics and was deeply satisfied. He even touches on astrology and UFOs (in a critical manner). The book has included pictures illustrating facts I knew very well but had never seen so well demonstrated. The author is obviously not only a good scientist he is also a superior lecturer. If you want just one book to explore what you want to know in astronomy and astrophysics you have it here. Since I am teaching astronomy at my local college I will make it my textbook.

I would just like to add one point to the review of Gudzent. In his preface, Kaler explains that one of his reasons for writing the book was that he was teaching a course in astronomy for antrophologist. He's covering a lot of topics about terrestial and planetary motion that is of interest to a wide range of people, but that is often no longer covered in modern astronomy textbooks. If you're interested in a solid background for "cultural astronomy", this is the book for you!

All pages are in my copy (1996)--nothing missing. No complaints with the book. I am a professional engineer (electrical) and an amateur astronomer who wanted to learn about the celestial sphere so I could better find my way around the night sky using the concepts of declination and right ascension (used by astronomers). I could not have bought a better book. The book does not dumb down the concepts, yet keeps the math simple. If you are an amateur astronomer who has not had an introduction to the celestial sphere, get the book and read it. You'll learn some interesting concepts that will help you understand how to navigate around in the night sky. Cool stuff.

I've owned this book for a couple years now and just started rereading it today. I was again struck by its quality. The author set out to fill a need in the literature and accomplished that task spectacularly. Let me say I had (before reading this book) zero background in astronomy, and just wanted something to start me off with the basics and take it from there. This is recreational/hobby reading for me, and for it to fit that purpose as well as a more serious academic role, again speaks to its quality and how clearly a complex topic has been explained. The biggest thing I gained from the first reading of this book was a much greater spatial awareness of the earth, the sun and moon, and the stars. When I look up at the night sky now, I understand exactly what direction I'm facing, where the moon is and where it will be two hours, or two weeks from now, and why certain stars are visible at this moment and how that changes. I was also fascinated with the chapter on time, and how the different methods of measuring time progressed through history.

I really don't know what else I can write, just that if you have any interest in what's happening when you look up at the sky, buy this book!

A concise and comprehensive work on astronomy. I'm a casual amateur astronomer, and chose the book for its first ~ six chapters explaining the coordinate system, relative motion and the like. Consequently, I've not read the entire book and use it primarily as a reference. Today, 20 June, I was looking up a topic in the index, p. 137. Went in search of p. 137 and discovered pp. 108-140 are missing. They were not torn out, but simply are not bound in the text. Page 107 has a drawing and the next page is 141. The missing pages include such sections on binary stars, variable stars and the Milky Way galaxy. My book is copyrighted ~ 1995.