I just finished reading John Hicks’ new book, Building a Roll-Off Roof Observatory — A Complete Guide for Design and Construction (Springer, 2009). This is the latest entry in British astronomy popularizer Patrick Moore’s Practical Astronomy Series. Hicks is a Canadian amateur astronomer and a professional Senior landscape architect who has designed and built observatories for himself and others. If you’re in the process of or thinking about building...

Guest blog from Laurance R. Doyle, SETI Institute Principal Investigator Ever forget to wonder about the stars? Robert Eklund’s First Star I See Tonight: An Exploration of Wonder will remind you. This book reminds me why I went into astronomy to begin with: The love of the stars, their beauty, grandeur, purity, playful order, our ancient ancestral relatives. Ah yes, wonder! Ah yes, perspective! I remember now. If you have never gotten to know yourself...

Just in time to keep the Apollo 11 anniversary celebration from dying out, out comes a book called Moonfire . Though, calling it a book seems like kind of an understatement. Not content to simply reproduce Of a Fire on the Moon , Norman Mailer’s gripping contemporary account of the Moon landings, the publishers at Taschen also include some amazing pictures from LIFE magazine and NASA’s own archives. Many of these pictures have not been published or...

Special contribution from Astronomy magazine illustrator, Roen Kelly Very seldom do I get a request to write for the magazine. Smart move on management’s part. However, it just so happened a book of paintings arrived at the Astronomy offices. The book, Painting Apollo: First Artist on Another World , showcases the paintings of Alan Bean. Who better to review the book but one of the staff artists? The book is unique in that, as many of you know, Alan...

A new reference, The Cambridge Double Star Atlas (Cambridge University Press, 2009), just arrived at the magazine. Written by experienced observer James Mullaney and beautifully illustrated by renowned celestial cartographer Wil Tirion, this is a comprehensive and gorgeous work. The Cambridge Double Star Atlas is the first modern star atlas devoted to double and multiple stars. In it, you’ll find more than 2,000 stellar pairs. The authors painstakingly...

I just received a copy of Prelude Lake (Nightscapes 3-D Publishing, 2008), a coffee-table book that showcases great images of the aurora borealis, or northern lights. In addition to the night sky photography by Bryan Rich White, the book also comes with a music CD by Jonn Serrie. Prelude Lake also contains more than 60 stereo images. Each is a 7-inch wide “card” with a left and right image. The author included a handheld image fuser called a lorgnette...

A new book just crossed my desk. It’s Shrouds of the Night — Masks of the Milky Way and Our Awesome New View of Galaxies by David L. Block and Kenneth C. Freeman (Springer, 2008). The authors research dark subjects (cosmic dust, dark matter, etc.), and in this book, they present images and data to help readers understand what’s going on within galaxies. Block is the Director of the Anglo American Cosmic Dust Laboratory in Johannesburg, South Africa...

Eclipses draw amateur astronomers like magnets to exotic places to see the biggest observing events of the year. The occasional eclipse book is a relatively rare item and a treasured keepsake — memories for those who went along and a dream book for those who didn’t but aspire to next time around. I recently received a beautiful book of eclipse stories from last year titled Eclipse 2008, produced by Aram Kaprielian of TravelQuest International . The...

This month, Cambridge University Press published Astronomy columnist Stephen James O’Meara ’s latest book for stargazers, Observing the Night Sky with Binoculars . The book — billed as “a simple guide to the heavens” — is for beginners. This is a new direction for Steve, who has published several guides to observing deep-sky objects with telescopes. I asked him why he wrote the book and how readers could benefit from it. Pendick: How did this book...

I just finished the second edition of Observing the Moon — the Modern Astronomer’s Guide by Gerald North ( Cambridge University Press , 2007). Nice. If you fancy yourself a lunar observer, have made a commitment to one day observe the Moon, or even if you’re thinking about checking the Moon out once in a while, I highly recommend this book. North produced the first edition of Observing the Moon — the Modern Astronomer’s Guide in 2000, and that version...