Customer Reviews

Smithsonian Handbooks: Stars and Planets (Smithsonian Handbooks)

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As in all other DK books, colored pictures, photographs, and high-quality gloss paper are found in this book. This book clearly gives a drawing of the constellations, a little history, where it is visible (latitudes), and at the very end, finishes it off with a map of all of the stars from both hemispheres, meaning that you can take this book anywhere in the world and use it! Plenty of information to be found in this book for star gazers. For pros, it's a great reference as it lists individual star names, also, like M2, etc.

Our then-3-year-old son originally read the Insects book and carried it around with him everywhere (it stayed on his bed stairs at night!), excitedly pointing out insects and bugs he found in our yard. We checked out some others from the library and decided to buy the rest of them as they're wonderful reference books and we wanted to foster our son's love for learning.

He love this Stars and Planets book, too, and it's a wonderful complement for our telescope. It's thorough, descriptive, has vibrant and detailed pictures, and is very durable (we own the "turtleback" versions, which have harder covers than paperback ones). This set will last for years and encourage our sons (our 2-year old loves them, too, especially the Reptiles one) to explore the world around them, both in books and outside.

I purchased this book for my children; it ended up as one of my favourites! It's a brilliant little book, enjoyable to read with wealth of information and colourful pictures and maps for beginners and even intermediate Star Gazers. It amazingly manages to convey "though very very briefly" the facts about the Universe, the Sun, Stars, Planets and Constellations (Including the Asterisms, Historical and Mythological origins) enough to be informative and enjoyable for the whole family. It covers the planets, the 88 Constellations with some listing of their most prominent stars and objects with a nice little map of planet earth indicating were each constellation is visible from and when; its covers the moon and a few of its observable features, phases and eclipses etc. Nice introduction to the planets and their atmosphere and structure with the simple facts and comparison with those of earth and the moon when applicable. Even Asteroids, Comets and Meteors get a page or two. Equipment and many other bits interesting and informative facts make it a book for anyone. If you are curious or just want to read about the wonders out there this is a good start with the added bonus of being for Adults as well as the younger audience. The DK Eyewitness Workbook "Stars and Planets" complements this book wonderfully.

written by an amateur. easy to read. easy to follow. gives a picture of what constellations "look" like. educational.

My family loves are telescope. This help my husband and I with all of there questions.