Used price: $186.36
List price: $20.00 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $2.00
Collectible price: $12.71
List price: $15.95 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $11.12
Buy one from zShops for: $11.12
The first part, with text and a lot of color pictures covers the basics of every subject you can imagine regarding sky watching: Binoculars, telescopes, cities and urban skies, software, history, every planet, binary stars, eclipses etc. etc. etc. always in just two or four pages.
The second part covers every constellation in the sky, in
alphabetical order (one constellation per page), with stars up to 6th (I guess) magnitude, highlighting the most interesting stars, nebulae etc., each one of the included features has a symbol (in the text below the map) so you can know at a glance if it is to be seen at naked eye, with binoculars or with a telescope. I should mention that it also has a 12 general skycharts, so you can always use the one according to your latitude and time of the year.
And the third part ("the Starhopping Guide") are 20 selected sectors of the sky, including stars up to 8th magnitude (deep-sky objects up to 12.5) with text and photos regarding deep sky features, double stars, nebulae etc. etc. Useful: constantly the text points out what you can expect to see with a given telescope (4", 6", 8" lens diameter).
And I have some mixed additional comments:
-I think every picture has been thoughtfully selected (no pictures just to fill space, as I've seen in other books).
-The sky maps are made by Will Tirion (so you can expect that
there is what should be there, and nothing less).
-There is a small map showing the path of sun eclipses until year 2015
-The moon is covered in 8 pages, featuring some 300 craters, mares etc.
-I liked the section about "in store test" for choosing binoculars.
-I was a little bit disappointed that the "Starhopping guide" includes many features for telescopes with an aperture of 8", and up to 16"... (of course, this is because I have a 5" aperture telescope!)
-The book itself has an uncommon size: about 6 1/2" x 11", so it's still handy to take it outdoors, but large enough to include sky maps of reasonable size.
-I see that this book includes in few words a lot of information that I've read in more detail somewhere else. I wonder how this will be taken for someone who this is her/his first skywatching book. It could be preciously treasured for years... or it could bore the the poor reader: Who knows?.
And finally, at the price offered here, it's a steal!
Used price: $8.99
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Used price: $5.00
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Used price: $9.99
Buy one from zShops for: $10.43
List price: $14.94 (that's 8% off!)
Used price: $13.48
Collectible price: $10.88
Buy one from zShops for: $10.76
List price: $15.00 (that's 30% off!)
Used price: $5.00
Buy one from zShops for: $9.00
Used price: $3.00
Collectible price: $9.53
Buy one from zShops for: $3.74
I purchased these 15 to 25 years ago at a garage sale. Green hard covers and almost mint condition.