First Astronomy Book

[lunator]

After watching the Aurora this month and realising it is 20 years since I returned to the hobby. I thought I would interesting to dig out my first Astronomy book. I bought this secondhand as a teenager. I like the drawing of the Hubble telescope 😁.

Cheers

Ian

[John]

I've always loved David A Hardy's artwork 👍

One of the first astronomy books that I read was "The Challenge of the Stars" by Patrick Moore which featured many of David Hardy's pictures. It really fired my interest 🙂

I think I have the one that you picture somewhere as well 🙂

[lunator]

It appears under a couple of "brands" mine is Country life. It also appears under Hamlyn and Larousse. 

I think I paid £2.50 at a jumble sale 😁.

Cheers

Ian

[Andy ES]

As with many kids this was my first astronomy book which I got one Christmas and read avidly. This book was responsible for starting my interest

 

[John]

6 minutes ago, Andy ES said:

As with many kids this was my first astronomy book which I got one Christmas and read avidly. This book was responsible for starting my interest

 

That picture on the cover takes me back to the night of the 10th of May - the aurora actually looked pretty much like that 🙂

[Andy ES]

 

6 minutes ago, John said:

That picture on the cover takes me back to the night of the 10th of May - the aurora actually looked pretty much like that 🙂

very nice, but I couldn’t see it like that anytime in London in 1976 😂

Edited May 26 by Andy ES

[Tiny Clanger]

1 hour ago, John said:

I've always loved David A Hardy's artwork 👍

Me too, I've got 'The New Challenge of the Stars'(1977, the £4.95 sticker still on the cover) and 'Hardyware, The Art of David A Hardy' from 2001, well worth hunting down if you don't already have it.   I was unreasonably pleased to find he lives a few miles from where I did before leaving for uni. still going strong, he must be well into his 80's now. He has a good website https://www.astroart.org/ ,

 

[jjohnson3803]

Not the first I read, but the first I bought sometime in the 1960s.  The scent of the ink or paper or binding glue is very distinctive and it still triggers good memories.

 

[DirkSteele]

My first astronomy book is from 1986 and I would have been well under 10 years old.

 

A couple of years later, and still probably under 10 I picked this up either at the London Planetarium or Science Museum when I started using my dad’s 10x50s and was getting a bit more serious about stargazing.

Edited May 29 by DirkSteele
Typo

[Space Hopper]

Here is mine : The Amateur Astronomer, by John Gribbin. Long gone now, and this internet photo is not the best.

It was published in 1979, and it was probably a Christmas present. I would have been around 12 years old 

I read it all pretty much, and from then on went on to Patrick Moores yearbooks, which i also borrowed copies of past years from the local library.

The seed was sown, although it was a few years after that i got my first telescope.

 

Edited May 29 by Space Hopper

[Paul M]

I too had that book by Baker/Hardy. I've mentioned previously as one of my favorites.

It's a while ago now but the first purely astronomy book I remember owning was Constellations, Antonin Rukle:

Long since gone, somewhere. It's from the same family as Moon, Mars and Venus, which I still have a copy of, somewhere.

There were many others of that era, not specifically astronomy. Perhaps my most memorable book and predating those above, was "Children of the Universe" by Hoimar VonDitfurth. Along with Asimov''s Guide to Science, that book blew my mind, quite literally. Bizarrely, perhaps one of the reasons I did so poorly at school. I needed real answers...

Edited May 29 by Paul M

[John]

My first book on astronomy was given to my younger brother but astronomy didn't really turn out to be his thing so I nicked the book from him 😈

This was probably around the late 1960's. 

This is not my original (which I do still have somewhere) but it is of the same vintage:

 

[Geoff Lister]

My edition of "The Observer's Book of ASTRONOMY" is dated 1962, and, as printed on the inside of the paper cover, cost the princely sum of 5/- NET (25p in new money). Section 27, on pages 80 & 81, covers CORONA BOREALIS, and mentions T Coronae, and its nova events to magnitude 2 in 1866 and magnitude 3 in 1946. A quick check last night, and this star (pair) was still about magnitude 10.

I also have "The Observer's Book of WEATHER", with the same publishing date and price. The sections on "III The winds and their currents", "IV The story of the clouds", "V When it rains", "VI Storm and tempest", "VII Dew, frost and fog", and finally, "VIII Other weather phenomena"; cover most of the reasons why many of the activities covered in its Astronomy companion are curtailed.

Geoff

[lunator]

10 hours ago, Space Hopper said:

Here is mine : The Amateur Astronomer, by John Gribbin. Long gone now, and this internet photo is not the best.

It was published in 1979, and it was probably a Christmas present. I would have been around 12 years old 

I read it all pretty much, and from then on went on to Patrick Moores yearbooks, which i also borrowed copies of past years from the local library.

The seed was sown, although it was a few years after that i got my first telescope.

 

I had an excellent book by John Gribben on the Sun. It was called 'The Strangest Star' it was written when the Siun still had a 'neutrino problem' 😀

[tomato]

Here’s mine, I received it at a school prize giving in 1972. It makes me smile that the “state of the art” photo of M31 on the cover is very similar to images we capture today.