Through the Telescope: A Guide for the Amateur Astronomer

by Patricia Barnes-Svarney

Book Overview

A complete guide for the amateur astronomer??a telescope buyer's guide and field guide to the sky all in one. Winner of a New York Academy of Sciences book award, this popular handbook has been... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0071348042
• ISBN13: 9780071348041
• Release Date: November 1999
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill Companies
• Length: 309 Pages
• Weight: 1.24 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 7.3" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Excellent guide

This is an excellent guide for the amateur astronomer, with copious information on both what to look at in the sky and what to buy to do so, including both binoculars and telescopes. It has copious information on every aspect of skywatching, down to the best filters to view the various planets through. It's very supportive of amateur astronomy, consistently pointing out the contributions that amateurs have made and continue to make to the science (one of the few sciences where this is still possible).Quibbles: a few formatting problems, where the formatting notation shows up instead of italics or whatever was intended. And they repeat the urban legend about Galileo going blind from observing the sun (though admittedly I just recently found out that this is mistaken).Other than that, it's an excellent book, though more of a reference than a "sit-down-and-read" book, which is what I did with it, at least for now.Meanwhile, I wonder if some of the other reviews (below) apply to the earlier edition of the book, since I did not encounter the same problems.

Excellent reference book

As an amateur in astronomy, I found this book very educative. It covers all aspects of astronomy - from naked eye view of the sky to deep space objects, binocular to large telescope obesrvation, etc. Though it was written in 1989, the book will continue to be a reference book to all interested in astronomy.