The Star Atlas Companion: What you need to know about the Constellations 2012th Edition

From the reviews:

“The Star Atlas Companion is a necessary addition to every amateur astronomer who is interested in how the stars and star clusters one might observe with a small to medium telescope would actually appear. … this book is helpful for planning your observations and finding out more about the stars and constellations … . It contains a lot of information, possibly more than some of the smart computerized guidance systems that some telescopes have.” (Kadri Tinn, AstroMadness.com, April, 2014)

“The Star Atlas Companion fills an important niche. Targeted for the amateur astronomer, the book provides detailed information on the thousands of stars that make up the constellations; many star atlases do not feature this level of granularity. … The writing is detailed, straightforward, and well suited to an amateur audience; useful black-and-white illustrations on each constellation support the text. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower- and upper-division undergraduates andgeneral audiences.” (P. J. West, Choice, Vol. 50 (4), December, 2012)

The Star Atlas Companion is the ideal companion to any star atlas, as it is the first book to provide a true perspective on the characteristics and distances of over 1,100 stars and their movement through space. With the aid of scale diagrams, the reader can grasp difficult-to-understand concepts such as how far apart stars really are, their relative sizes, how fast they spin and their shapes, and how the constellation patterns change over time. This book:

– describes many stars visible to the naked eye in both the northern and southern hemispheres;

– explains binary and multiple star systems in detail;

– gives the properties of many open clusters;

– enables a true appreciation of the scale of our galactic neighborhood