Recommended publications

[Scaryjayne]

Hi. As a newbie to astronomy, I am trying to do as much research and background reading as possible, especially as the skies have been particularly unforgiving over recent weeks. My personal 'bible' is Turn Left at Orion, which has very useful tips about you scope as well as the night sky. However, I am keen to subscribe to a magazine, and as there is a whole plethora of publications out there, I don't know which is the best/most useful for a novice, and was hoping some of you may be able to help. Please advise. Confused but eager of Bolton, UK

[kevrees]

Im a total newbie myself, even to the point where i cant quite get my head around 'turn left at orion' lol. Have only read a couple of magazines (astronomy now and sky at night) and personally, tho its probably an obvious one is The sky at night. The sky guide in the centre of each issue is worth the cover price alone, especially to a new guy like me, it shows a load of really cool things to see each month using everything from your eyeballs to a monster telescope. As well as that there are always a few interesting articles in there as well and the icing on the cake is a pretty good cover disc as well which features the previous months tv show, some other cool video clips (think there was a sunquake on one of them which has got me getting some solar film ready to make a filter when i actually get a telescope, i always thought the sun was boring until i saw that), great astro images and a couple of 'how-to's' as well which as a newbie i found quite useful.

Thats just my opinion tho, it may be worth a trip to wh smith to have a look through what magazines on astronomy are available to see what one you prefer.

[Scaryjayne]

Thanks. I'll take a look