The Backyard Astronomer's Guide

The modern classic, completely updated.

The newest edition of The Backyard Astronomer's Guide includes the latest data and answers the questions most often asked by home astronomers, from beginners to experienced stargazers. Terence Dickinson and Alan Dyer provide expert guidance on the right types of telescopes and other equipment; photographing the stars through a telescope; and star charts, software and other references. They cover daytime and twilight observing, planetary and deep-sky observing, and much more.

With over 500 color photographs and illustrations, The Backyard Astronomer's Guide is one of the most valuable, beautiful and user-friendly astronomy books ever produced.

New and updated for this edition:

• A 20-page full-color Atlas of the Milky Way provides location and context for hundreds of celestial objects mentioned throughout the book.
• A chapter on Astrophotography with Digital Cameras specifies what equipment works best and how to use it to collect a color gallery of celestial portraits.
• Telescopes for Recreational Astronomy features assessments of a wide range of new telescopes, from models for beginners to those for veteran astronomy enthusiasts, with special emphasis on computerized telescopes and how they work.
• Accessory Catalog spotlights the best of the accessories and flags the frivolous and irrelevant.
• Three practical appendices: Polar Aligning Your Telescope; Optics Cleaning and Collimation; Testing Your Telescope Optics.

Any serious home astronomer must have this superb guide as an ongoing reference.

Rather than spreading itself too thin, "The Backyard Astronomer's Guide" concentrates on backyard astronomy as a hobby, staying away from much of the science behind the objects we view. This is one of the book's best qualities. The science and naturalization of objects in the sky is important, but there are plenty of other books dealing with this subject.

The authors have a lot of experience in backyard astronomy, and it shows.


You only need five things to be an amateur astronomer   August 12, 1998
26 out of 26 found this review helpful

1. Nightwatch -by the same author- provides an introduction and star maps.

2. A pair of good 7X50 or 10X50 binoculars.

3. A red flashlight.

4. A subscription to Astronomy or Sky and Telescope.

5. This book. Period.

A definitive guide to amateur astronomy and probably the best available anywhere at any price.


Excellent "newbie" reference   May 24, 1999
23 out of 23 found this review helpful

After purchasing a telescope and having absolutely no clue on what to do with it, I got this book. I found it to be written with a novice in mind and therefore the explanations weren't too technical. I enjoyed the book immensely.


My most prized Book on Astronomy   December 30, 2002
James Judson Peebles Jr. (San Diego, California)
19 out of 20 found this review helpful

I have bought around ten books on astronomy and this one is my favorite. It is a joy to read. It is written in a style of english that is understandable and a pleasure to read. It has hundreds of high quility pictures of state of the art information to date. It covers everything that you could possibly want to know about astronomy. It covers types of telescopes and which ones to stay away from buying to how to observe planets and deep sky objects. It covers the basics on how to use your first telescope. I love this book so much that I would recomend to anyone that want to know about the fun stuff that one would want to know on this subject. I'm not kidding this book is beautiful and I spend more time on this book reading over and over subjects that I want to know more about. If you want my honest opinion you will be very happy with this fine book.