If you have ever watched shooting stars graze the sky or wondered about a particularly bright point of light near the horizon, then this is the book for you. A Skywatcher's Year is the authoritative guide to visible bodies in the night sky throughout the year. Through fifty-two essays, Jeff Kanipe guides you to celestial events and phenomena that occur or are visible with the naked eye and binoculars for each week of the year. He acquaints you not only with up-to-date astronomical information on stars, nebulae, meteors, the Milky Way, and galaxies, but also conveys the beauty and wonder of the night sky. Covering both the Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere, A Skywatcher's Year helps readers find prominent stars and constellations, bright star clusters, nebulae, and galaxies, and explains how and when to observe prominent annual meteor showers. Kanipe also examines the most frequently-observed celestial body, the Moon, and the intriguing lore surrounding it. A rich and jargon-free look at the sky through the four seasons, this engaging book will give new dimensions to backyard star-gazing.

A Skywatcher's Year

Science & Math

Kanipe, Jeff

Astronomy & Space Science

Cambridge University Press

A complete, illustrated guide for amateur astronomers describes twenty telescope tours of some of the sky's most fascinating phenomena, as well as information on skywatching tools and equipment, celestial bodies and artificial satellites, constellations, and more. Original.

Backyard Astronomy: Your Guide to Starhopping and Exploring the Universe (Nature Company Guides)

Burnham, Robert

George, Martin

Levy, David H.

Dyer, Alan

Garfinkle, Robert A.

Time-Life Education

Chasing Hubble's Shadows: The Search for Galaxies at the Edge of Time

Astronomers are peering farther out in space—and back in time—than ever before Chasing Hubble’s Shadows is an account of the continuing efforts of astronomers to probe the outermost limits of the observable universe. The book derives its title from something the great American astronomer Edwin Hubble once wrote: “Eventually, we reach the dim boundary—the utmost limits of our telescopes. There, we measure shadows, and we search among ghostly errors of measurement for landmarks that are scarcely more substantial.” The quest for Hubble’s “shadows”—those unimaginably distant, wispy traces of stars and galaxies that formed within the first few hundred million years after the Big Bang—takes us back, in effect, to the beginning of time as we are able to perceive it, when the first discrete stellar objects appeared out of what has lately come to be known as the “cosmic dark age.” The information that is being gleaned from these dim sources—chiefly with the aid of Hubble’s namesake, the Hubble Space Telescope—promises to yield clues to many cosmic puzzles, including the nature of the mysterious “dark energy” that is now believed to pervade all of space.

Hill and Wang

In this sweeping tour of the cosmos and our place within it, acclaimed science writer Jeff Kanipe shows the many ways we are connected to the vast universe we inhabit. Long before our apelike ancestors dropped from the trees and began playing with fire, even before the Sun emerged from its chrysalis of dust and irradiated its brood of planets, numberless and nameless astronomical events affected Earth and its emerging life-forms. Our chemical makeup―from the iron in our blood to the calcium in our bones―derives from stars that lived and died hundreds of millions of years ago. Comets have showered organic molecules into our oceans, and asteroid impacts have wiped out predominant species that lived before.Tracing the whole natural history of how events in the near and far universe have influenced life on Earth today, and how they might influence life in the future, Kanipe, with unparalleled eloquence, explores a host of intriguing questions:• How the Earth's orbit and inclination have triggered past ice ages• The role ancient supernovae may have played in mass extinctions and genetic changes• How a slight but persistent dip in solar output contributed to a multicentury cooling event called the "Little Ice Age" • How ancient asteroid impacts pressed Earth's evolutionary reset button and how astronomers are striving to make sure that it won't happen again• The widespread effects that our Sun's changing galactic environment has on life and climateKanipe also reflects upon the possible societal effects of alien contact, a type of cosmic intervention that some astronomers believe could happen within the next few decades. His elegant, jargon-free descriptions of the truly "big-picture view" of life on Earth will fascinate and inform everyone who has an interest in astronomy, the evolution of our planet, and the future of humankind.

The Cosmic Connection: How Astronomical Events Impact Life on Earth

Prometheus+books

Astronomy: the Definitive Guide

Weldon Owen

Can a single explosion change the course of history? An eruption at the end of the eighteenth century led to years of climate change while igniting famine, disease, and even perhaps revolution. Laki is Iceland's largest volcano--and its most fearsome. Its eruption in 1783 is one of history's great, untold natural disasters. Spewing out sun-blocking ash and then a poisonous fog for eight long months, the effects of the eruption lingered across the world for years. It caused the deaths of people as far away as the Nile and created catastrophic conditions throughout Europe. Island on Fire is the story not only of a single eruption but the people whose lives it changed, the dawn of modern volcanology, as well as the history&#8213;and potential&#8213;of other super-volcanoes like Laki around the world. And perhaps most pertinently, in the wake of the eruption of another Icelandic volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, which closed European air space in 2010, acclaimed science writers Witze and Kanipe look at what might transpire should Laki erupt again in our lifetime.

Island on Fire: The Extraordinary Story of a Forgotten Volcano That Changed the World

History

Witze, Alexandra

World

Blackstone Publishing

This guided tour of the universe composed of photographs, diagrams, and star maps is a practical reference to the night sky. Each aspect of the solar system is covered, from star formations and the expansion of the universe to the evolution of astronomy and the latest technological developments. Planetary research, sky-gazing, and cosmology are discussed and advice is given for buying telescopes. Esta guiá del universo compuesto de fotografiás, diagramas, y mapas de las estrellas es una referencia práctica del cielo nocturno. Se cubren cada aspecto del sistema solar, desde las formaciones de estrellas y la expansión del universo hasta la evolución de astronomía y los avances tecnológicas más recientes. También se discuten investigaciones de las planetas, campo de cielo, cosmología y consejos para comprar equipo como un telescopio.

Astronomia: Guia del cielo nocturno

Blume

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Kanipe, Jeff. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Kanipe, Jeff