Celestial Delights

Celestial Delights is essentially a 'TV Guide' for teh sky. This will be its third edition. This title, which has aggregated sales of about 20,000 copies to date in its two previous editions and has found a niche with skygazers, is much awaited.

Through extensive graphics integrated with an eight-year-long calendar of sky events, it provides a look at "don't miss" sky events, mostly for naked-eye and binocular observing. The book is organized by ease of observation - lunar phases and the brighter planets come first, while solar eclipses, the aurora, and comets come later. Celestial Delights also includes a hefty dose of sky lore, astronomical history, and clear overviews of current science. It provides a handy reference to upcoming naked-eye events, with information broken out in clear and simple diagrams and tables that are cross-referenced against a detailed almanac for each year covered.

Most broad-ranging astronomy field guides focus on stars, constellations, and the deep sky, but tend to ignore planetary events, which are in by far the most widely observable aspects of the changing night sky.

Celestial Delights puts a variety of information all in one place, presents it in a friendly way that does not require prior in-depth astronomical knowledge, but provides the context and historical background for understanding events that astronomical computer programs or web sites lack.

• Astronomical observing
• Astronomy with binoculars
• Celestial almanac
• Naked-eye observing
• Observing planets
• Observing stars and constellations
• Observing the Moon

Praise for the second edition:

"Celestial Delights is a wonderful addition to the introductory astronomy classes I teach at the university. Students are starved for ways to connect with the universe around them, and Celestial Delights offers a clear and concise description of what, where, when, and why, with helpful figures, diagrams, and tables."
- Dr. Judith S. Young, Professor of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts

"The book's long span of coverage not only keeps it current for many years but also helps illuminate the physics behind what we see - for example, Venus's motion relative to our own planet's and the Sun... the authors here provide a pleasant and enjoyable tour that will keep  beginners oriented."
- Robert Burnham, Astronomy magazine

“The book provides a ‘listing’ for everything that’s going to happen in the sky during the decade from 2011 to 2020 … providing plenty of detail about each event, and also introducing you to things you hadn’t considered before. … the style is always readable and easily understood. Each topic chapter provides a calendar of events, with highlights and points of interest. … If you were going to buy just one book on astronomy, ‘Celestial Delights’ would be an ideal candidate.” (Dianne Castaneda, Universe Today, February, 2012)

From the reviews of the third edition:

“This book is clearly aimed at the novice astronomer and is presented in a very readable style with a generous number of good-quality illustrations. … This book is nicely produced and will no doubt find a home on many amateur-astronomers’ bookshelves. In many respects, it is an introductory guide to what is observable in the night (and daylight) sky. It also provides the first port of call for an explanation of some of the interesting happenings in the night sky.” (Steve Bell, The Observatory, Vol. 132 (1228), June, 2012)

• Syneren Technologies Corp., Lanham, USA

  Francis Reddy

Francis Reddy is a senior science writer for Syneren Technologies Corp., and writes science-related press releases and other content for the Astrophysics Science Division at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. He previously served as a senior editor at Astronomy magazine and has published several books for skygazers of all ages, including Halley's Comet! (AstromMedia, 1985), The Children's Atlas of the Universe (Rand McNally & Co., 1990), as well as two previous editions of Celestial Delights (Ten Speed Press, 1992 and 2002) with more than 20,000 copies in print.

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