To Know the Stars

An introduction to the night sky, for children and other beginners; written in very simple language, and tested on delighted children down to the age of eight. At the outset they are told how to set about viewing the stars; the "dome" picture on the back cover helps in understanding how the sky rolls from east to west. Then for each month there is a simple but vivid sky map; the facing text makes two or three constellations per month stick in the memory, by telling their stories and a few other things about them-in January, Orion and Taurus and the Pleiades; and so on around the sky. Other concepts are woven in: the Milky Way, leap-days, the ecliptic and zodiac, meteor showers, the Pole, midsummer, changing clocks, dark trenches in the sky and "silly little constellations" . . . A "Quiz" in September is one of the ways of making it fun. After these monthly pages, there are 14 rather packed pages to turn to for "more explanation"; they amount to a gentle beginning textbook of astronomy. The usually confusing business of the sky's changing appearance is cleared by starting from the simplest truth-space with the far-off stars in it-and only then adding the things that complicate it: Sun, Earth, Earth's motions and atmosphere and curvature. A list of the Top Twenty stars (with their personalities) leads into more about stars: their color, distances, sizes. There is something on observing conditions, naked eye vs. binoculars vs. telescopes, astronomy vs. astrology, Greek letters, distances and angles; there is a glossary of terms, and a short list of further reading.