Useful reference sources

 

Starscape’s Book Recommendations The link below will take you to a page full of astronomy books which should provide you with inspiration and guidance for making your own star ceiling display, or you may simply want to buy a book as a gift. On this page we’ll be carrying reviews of books which we’d particularly like to recommend - either as sources of information for DIY star ceiling enthusiasts or simply as collections of beautiful images. If you would like to buy the book from Amazon click the cover.
	Firstly, we’d like to recommend Geoffrey Cornelius’s The Starlore Handbook, which is subtitled 'The starwatcher’s essential guide to the 88 constellations, their myths and symbols'. This 176 page book is a great collection of star charts, illustrations and starlore. If you want to know how the constellations got their names, this is the book for you. Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Persian, Arab, Chinese and Maori legends and starlore are detailed, with original illustrations by Emma Harding and images drawn from the art of many cultures and ages.
However, the book is not simply a collection of myths and legends, but also is a good beginner’s technical reference source, with star maps for each month and a detailed description of the makeup of each constellation. Somewhat confusingly, Amazon lists three in-print publishers of this book, with prices ranging from £6.99 to £9.71. At either price this is a worthwhile purchase, but our reference copy is the Duncan Baird version at £6.99. Paperback - 176 pages (18 May, 2000) Duncan Baird Publishers; ISBN: 1900131161 While The Starlore Handbook is a compact paperback, our other current recommendation - Ken Croswell’s Magnificent Universe is a solid hardback ‘coffee table’ book of a size appropriate to do justice to the excellent photos within. This book is an up-to-date collection of the best photos of the solar system and wider universe.
		Close-ups of the planets and their moons take up the first part of the book, with other sections devoted to comets, nebulae and galaxies. One photo is simply filled with galaxies, as dense as the stars we see with the naked eye, reminding us that - as large as our own Milky Way galaxy is - it is just a tiny corner of the Universe. Even if we do ever achieve interstellar travel, a trip across our own galaxy would represent no more than a walk across the room in Earthbound terms.
The accompanying text is full of fascinating pieces of information: did you know for instance the Andromeda galaxy is approaching our own at the rate of 6 million miles per day? However, even at this pace this neighbouring galaxy won’t collide with us for billions of years. The text is written in a style to make it accessible to the educated layman and is an accessible summary of current understanding of cosmology. Want to know what the Hubble Constant is? Then you’ll find this an excellent reference source, as well as a beautiful collection of stunning images. £32.97 from Amazon. Hardcover - 210 pages (1 October, 1999) Simon & Schuster; ISBN: 0684845946