[.ca] Three Hundred and Sixty Five Starry Nights: An ... (ISBN 0671766066)

Burnham's in Miniature:
I love it! Chet Raymo imbues this delightful book with reverence, understanding, wonder, joy, science, and legend all at once. He guides you through the sky night by night, acquainting you with the major constellations and pointing out objects of beauty, interest, and mystery throughout. Best of all, he confines himself to subjects you can see with the naked eye or a very modest telescope; he never sets you up for disappointment by taunting you with things you'd need a huge telescope and infinite patience to see, and wouldn't believe you'd found even then. Raymo's artwork reflects his love of the sky, drawing as much from history, mythology, and imagination as from science. Nevertheless, he also lucidly presents science that's missing from hordes of more pretentious books. I defy anyone who's curious about astronomy to read this book and not be infected by Raymo's enthusiasm. To me, "365 Starry Nights" reflects the same spirit as Robert Burnham's timeless "Celestial Handbook," while addressing an audience daunted by the prospect of 2,100 pages. For readers caught between H. A. Rey's brilliant "Where the Stars Are" and Burnham's magnum opus, "365 Starry Nights" has no equal. If it had an index, it would be perfect.

good for the naked eye up to binoculars:
I was reluctant to get this book because it seemed to general--I wanted to read about the travels and cycles and physics of the universe, but I got it anyway. What I found was a great introduction to astronomy based mostly upon the constallations which are the framework or "scaffolding," if you will, of the skies... Even the planets and the distant nebulae and other interesting sights are located withinin one constallation or another. Besides mapping out the sky for you, the book provides a good mix of history and mythology to add meaning to the structures in the sky. Learn which stars aided ancient fur traders on their rocky paths, the stars feared and worshiped by ancient civilizations, and the heroic battles between dragons, warriors, kings, and other mythological figures. Oh, and I did end up getting some of the technical information I wanted. The book does talk here and there about planetary movements and black holes and oscilating light flares, but it is all intersperced within the applicable pages so you get the technical lessons without knowing it. I just got a mid range telescope, so I'm not sure how useful it will be for that--but it's purpose isn't to point out pin pricks in the sky, but to provide a sweeping map. If you want single points of interest to aim your scope at, "turn left at orion" seems to be well recommended and suited for that.

Very complete but with rough spots.:
This is a somewhat disorganized, but very good beginners volume. Suffers from inconsistent provision of star and constellation pronunciations in last few months, occasional lapses of continuity between dated text and figures, lots of repetition - the latter not all bad for beginners. Cygnus figures far overdone in quantity - appeared on 14 of the 17 pages for August . October month section contains outstanding explanation and illustrations of celestial sphere and stellar movements with respect to observers location, and extremely useful and lucid graphic and textual explanation of RA, declination, azimuth and elevation relationships. Best I have seen in other volumes, mostly of much higher price. Got the impression Ramo got tired of the project along about September when things started going a bit downhill on pronunciations and content. Altogether a good buy for beginners.

More than 365 Nights:
Not knowing what books on astronomy are good or not, I just happened to pull this book out of the sea of astronomy literature. Fortunately, I hit the jackpot. From beginning to end, there is something new and exciting to learn. Understandable enough for a child, yet exciting enough for an adult. It will spur the beginner on to dig deeper and deeper. One caveat: If you are anything like me, you won't be content to read just one day's entry at a time, but will end up reading the whole book through!

Lightweight, enjoyable reading.:
This is a strange book. It's partly strange that I got the book for $... plus shipping two weeks ago, but now that free shipping is offered, the price has gone up to $.... In either case, you get what you pay for. The 365 day paradigm is cute but sort of trite. The material in the monthly groups is appropriate to the month, never mind the days, very interesting, and the figures basic. The figure formats and content are almost identical to those in the excellent "Stars" book by Rey, which Ramo offers as a reference, and the contents of which are pretty much repeated or paraphrased, spread amongst the 365 day notes in Ramo's book. Brief notes, not essays in most cases - but interesting. I can only think of something like six or seven other books that contain similar or more material, but in much cleaner and more scientific form with useful indexing not contained in Ramo's book, with lovely colored figures, - but their total cost is higher in some cases. Beginning readers with binoculars or small telescopes will search in vain for many of the deep space objects discussed by Ramo since many are not visible without large apertures. There is one instance under May 23rd where Sigma Octans is mentioned as near the southern celestial pole, but is not shown on the nearby figure of the pole area which shows four other stars. You need to search a page or two around some of the daily notes to find the illustration which goes with the discussion. The book could have used a good editor, a little more polish, and some indication of which of the objects mentioned are not visible to the naked eye, binocs, or a small scope. The other reviewers were correct that you need a real star chart to go with this book. The book "Skywatching", by Levy, sold by Amazon at a lower price than this one, is a far better choice. There is some interesting verbiage in this book, but the book is for enjoyable, very light reading, not for skywatching. I enjoyed reading it, but I take a Levy, Tirion, or Dickinson pub out with my eyes, my binocs, or any telescope to look into space. Enter those authors in the Amazon Search engine space and you'll find a lot of better choices for amateur astronomy. Save this one for a fun read on cloudy nights by the fire, and then give it to a grand child which is where mine is going.