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A Few Books on Astronomy

This is "Field Guide To The Night Sky" by The National Audubon Society. This book contains most of the information that a beginner needs and more. It shows monthly sky charts that help you to learn the constellations. It discusses the solar system, galaxies, nebulas, clusters, eclipses and much more. This, in my opinion, should be the first book a beginner buys.

This book "The Backyard Astronomers Guide" is a more expensive book but is also a good book for the beginner. It isn't much help learning the sky, but it will teach you a lot about telescopes. The Charleston public library has a couple copies. It would be a good idea to check it out of the library before buying your first telescope.

This is my sky atlas. Every astronomer needs one of these and needs to learn how to use it.

This book is just for fun. It has many unbelievable photos taken by the Hubble telescope. The public library has a copy of this if you don't want to buy it.

I have two books by Brain Greene; "The Fabric of the Cosmos", pictured at the left, and "The Elegant Universe". They are more advanced, probably on the level of an undergraduate physic's student. These books cover the history of astrophysics from Newton and Einstein to string theory and M theory and even covers the subject of time travel. Even if you don't understand all of it, there is still a great deal that can be learned from them.

"Astronomy" and "Sky and Telescope" are probably the two most popular monthly magazines and I highly recommend them.

In my collection of books I have a few antiques. Three of the books on the left were printed in the 1800's. The one on the far right is my oldest, printed in 1847. It lists the 7 known planets as Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Herschel. Uranus was not the official name of the 7th planet until the 1850's. It was called Herschel after its discoverer William Herschel.

The Book at the far left was printed in 1938. It is a college text book. What I find interesting about it is that on the inside cover there is a signature; J. R. Oppenheimer. I have no proof that it is authentic but I have found copies of his signature on line and they are very similar.

This is my astronomy bookcase. In the bottom right corner you'll notice there are several notebooks. This is material I have collected that is important to the work I do. In a book, you find information that you want to save scattered all through it, but by creating your own books, you have a quick reference to the information that is most important to you.