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To Know the Stars
An introduction to the night sky, for children and other beginners;
written in very simple language, and tested on delighted children
down to the age of eight.
At the outset they are told how to set about viewing the stars;
the "dome" picture on the back cover helps in understanding
how the sky rolls from east to west. Then for each month there is
a simple but vivid sky map; the facing text makes two or three constellations
per month stick in the memory, by telling their stories and a few
other things about them-in January, Orion and Taurus and the Pleiades;
and so on around the sky. Other concepts are woven in: the Milky
Way, leap-days, the ecliptic and zodiac, meteor showers, the Pole,
midsummer, changing clocks, dark trenches in the sky and "silly
little constellations" . . . A "Quiz" in September
is one of the ways of making it fun.
After these monthly pages, there are 14 rather packed pages to turn
to for "more explanation"; they amount to a gentle beginning
textbook of astronomy. The usually confusing business of the sky's
changing appearance is cleared by starting from the simplest truth-space
with the far-off stars in it-and only then adding the things that
complicate it: Sun, Earth, Earth's motions and atmosphere and curvature.
A list of the Top Twenty stars (with their personalities) leads
into more about stars: their color, distances, sizes. There is something
on observing conditions, naked eye vs. binoculars vs. telescopes,
astronomy vs. astrology, Greek letters, distances and angles; there
is a glossary of terms, and a short list of further reading.
The new edition has color paintings on front and back covers.
8½ x 11 in., 41 pages, color cover, illustrations.
1983; 14th printing 2007. ISBN 978-0-934546-12-6.
$8.00
 
"It retains the highly informative, lucid,
and user-friendly flavor of Ottewell's other books" —Sky
& Telescope
"At once a succession of imagined circumstances
leads the young sky watcher to recognize the reality we know behind
the appearance . . . There is no more straightforward guide to the
stars of the sky" —Scientific American
"I have a little girl and she is
already asking about the stars. And I can't think of a better start
than with this book" —A reader in South Carolina
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