Good book for beginners

[jamespels]

Hi all,

I was trawling round the children's section of Brierlow Bar bookstore and stumbled across "DK Starfinder" (Starfinder (Dk Astronomy): Amazon.co.uk: Carole Stott: Books).

It is a complete beginners guide with a simple, yet comprehensive guide to observing, reading and understanding star maps, how to star hop, what you can see and why, etc. It follows on with a constellation-by-constellation account of the whole sky (giving the latitudes each constallation is visible from), describing key features, good observing targets and points of interest in each. The final section is a monthly sky guide from 2010 - 2016.

It comes with a half decent planisphere stuck to the front (though this does mean you need to lift the whole book up to use it - think I'll stick to my David Chandler one!) and apparently a set of info cards (didn't come with mine but at £3 from a discount store, I'm not complaining).

The book is clearly aimed at beginners and would be a great first book; I picked up a copy for the concise information and that way it explains things more clearly than other books.

Highly recommended.

J.