ANNA and Richard Wagner stand beside a tree sparkling with baubles, next to a
table heaving with gifts. Nothing unusual about this image, you might
think—except that the couple adopted the same pose every year for 45
years. Side by side, year by year, the photographs show the gradual changes not
only to their bodies but also to the times through which they lived. And what
changes they were: the young Mr and Mrs Wagner of 1900 (no relation) would
surely not have recognised the world of their older, 1945 selves.

The Wagners’ festive snaps are among the hundreds of objects garnered from
more than 100 public and private collections for the “The Story of Time”
exhibition at Greenwich’s Queen’s House. More than 400 images of these objects
illustrate a book of the same name. It also offers essays from the lords of
time: Britain’s Astronomer Royal Martin Rees discusses cosmological time, Howard
Morphy of the Australian National University explores Aboriginal concepts of
time and astronomer Ernst Gombrich dwells on anniversaries. Other essays take us
to the world of the Babylonians, Aztecs and Japanese, or explore the different
flavours of time, such those of the geologist, musician or portrait painter.

Kristen Lippincott of London’s Royal Observatory, home of Greenwich Mean Time
and the place where the book and exhibition were conceived, decided to
concentrate on human perceptions of time rather than, say, physicists’ use of
the concept, or philosophical questions about whether any other sense is
meaningful. So The Story of Time explores not only the regularity of
clock time, but also the seeming irregularity of perceived time. Why does a
young child waiting for Christmas find time as slow and sticky as toffee, while
for those closer to three score years and ten, time often seems to race
past?

The images in the book make a powerful artistic, rather than scientific,
impression. Only a single object, a caesium beam clock with flashing lights and
laser beams, represents modern science or takes a glance into the future. It is
impressively precise: after 15 million years, it will be out by less than a
second.

As a parlour game for the long, long hours of a collective family hangover,
you could do worse than challenging the assembly to decipher the connection
between the following objects and our notion of time: paintings by Dali, Turner
and Titian, a rattlesnake, a slice of a redwood, illuminated Bibles, a page of
Einstein’s notes, a Navajo sand painting, a drum, a bison-skin robe, three
stoats and a model of a sheep’s liver.

The exhibition runs until 24 September 2000

PROGRESS in science depends largely on the invention and improvement of
instruments. ĐÓ°ÉÔ­´´s in fields such as research, educational demonstrations,
routine measurements and monitoring, spend considerable effort and time
improving the handiness, accuracy, stability and recording speed of their
instruments— not to mention reducing their cost, weight and
intrusiveness.

The continual evolution of these vital tools means it is a rare school,
university or lab that does not have at least one cupboard hiding
cobweb-encrusted instruments from past decades. Such relics are becoming ever
more popular both with private collectors and with museum curators such as
Robert Bud and Deborah Jean Warner, the editors of Instruments of Science.

A beautifully illustrated encyclopedia, the book is the result of a
collaboration between two major museums—the Science Museum, London, and
the National Museum of American History, Washington DC. A host of contributors
have produced thousand-word entries on everything from abacus and absorpiometer
to Wheatstone Bridge and X-ray machine.

The items in this A-to-X listing have been selected from modern scientific
practice, trade and museum catalogues and the indexes of historical scientific
texts. Each of the 327 entries is clear, concise and informative. Additional
references mean you can delve further into the histories and workings of better
known devices.

So now you have no excuse for not knowing the difference between a hygrometer
and a hydrometer, or a sphygmomanometer and spinthariscope. My understanding of
down hole sondes and the orifice viscometer has been greatly improved . . .

Edmond Halley by Alan Cook, Clarendon Press, ÂŁ29.50, ISBN 0198500319

WHEN you spend 14 years of your life working in an office above Edmund Halley’s old observatory, and you walk through what was his bedroom, study and kitchen every time you want a cup of coffee, you tend to get somewhat attached to the chap. And in the late evenings, when the tourists have left the old observatory at Greenwich, it is very easy to imagine yourself transported back to Halley’s era. Luckily, Alan Cook’s Edmond Halley is a masterly biography that can easily flesh out your imaginings.

Halley was a Londoner and lived through one of the most dramatic periods of that city’s history.

Born in 1656 Halley had four great advantages in life. First, he was an extremely clever and industrious general scientist who not only had many bright and original ideas, but who also approached science with a drive, practicality and enthusiasm that never left him. Secondly, he enjoyed 50 years of active scientific endeavour at a time when the subject was advancing at a great rate. Thirdly, he got on well with his friends and acquaintances and was greatly liked, which meant he had many useful and helpful scientific and social contacts. And finally, his father was both rich and generous, so Halley had financial independence, and all the patronage he needed.

The four cardinal points of Halley’s career were his clerkship at the Royal Society, his unofficial role as hydrographer and chief scientist to the Royal Navy, his work as Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford, and his appointment as England’s second Astronomer Royal. He died in 1742.

Today, we remember Halley for his periodic comet, but in his time he was famous as an adventurous navigator who travelled across the Atlantic to the realms of the southern ice. He was also noted for his knack of taking huge bodies of data and reducing them to manageable and sensible forms. His maps of the deviation of the compass needle from true north and his charts of the tides are perfect examples. As an outstanding empirical natural philosopher he compared these observations with abstract models, gaining a deep insight into their underlying physical causes.

Halley showed a refreshing faith in the importance and usefulness of historical material. He realised the cosmos was changing. This was confirmed by his discovery that certain stars had changed their celestial positions during the previous two millennia, and that the Moon was moving away from the Earth. Halley also stressed the Earth was older than the contemporary biblical chronologists insisted, and its magnetism slowly varied.

He believed deeply that a useful scientific hypothesis not only accounted for what is already known, but should also be able to predict what has yet to be discovered. Halley was also a generous communicator with an altruistic concern for the advancement of learning and knowledge.

Unfortunately, the main problem for a biographer of Halley is that our knowledge of the man is seriously unbalanced. His scientific, naval and diplomatic activities are well documented. But his social and family life are sparsely recorded.

Cook has done his best to overcome this and has written an erudite, thorough and extremely readable biography based on primary sources. Cook provides us with a masterly insight not only into Halley’s science but also into the relationship between Halley and the society of the day. What I liked was the way in which Cook was not side-stepped by the bitter carpings of John Flamsteed about Halley’s supposedly irreligious attitudes.

This book is well illustrated and extremely well referenced. It is a worthy tribute to the life of this country’s second greatest scientist.

In The Observer’s Year (Springer, £19/$29.95, ISBN
3540761470), the latest in the “Practical Astronomy” series, Moore has divided
the sky into 366 handy chunks, one for each night of the year. Night by night he
introduces you to new celestial wonders. Before the first month is out you will
be familiar with constellations, eclipses, aurorae, star clusters and much
more.

Moore’s tour starts on 1 January—but don’t worry, you can kick off
where you like, and if you miss a night because it’s cloudy you can catch up
later. He highlights special objects for viewing on certain nights, for
observers in both the northern and southern hemispheres, and gives historical
and scientific background. You can see virtually every object mentioned with the
naked eye or through binoculars: Moore stands at your shoulder encouraging you
to find them on his star maps, and then in the real sky. The book is beautifully
written and bubbles with enthusiasm. Moore is a superb personal tutor, and will
convert a complete novice to skilled amateur astronomer within 12 months.

If you can already find your way about the sky, have access to good
binoculars or a telescope, and are looking for something a little more
demanding, there is now a paperback version of Robert Garfinkle’s
Star-Hopping (Cambridge, published in hardback in 1994,
£11.95/$16.95, ISBN 0521598893). Garfinkle divides the year’s
stargazing into 12 chapters, each one a tour of a particular month’s evening
sky. Starting from the most prominent celestial landmarks, he tells you in
detail how to hop from one star to another, taking in the top sights along the
way. The maps and photographs are first class, and there are plenty of
challenging things to find and enjoy.

Patrick Moore’s second book this season, Brilliant Stars (Cassell,
ÂŁ10.99, ISBN 0304349720), concentrates on the 21 brightest stars in the
celestial sphere. It starts with the glorious Sirius, the brightest of them all,
and follows up with chapters on Betelgeuse—which marks Orion’s right
shoulder—Antares, Formalhaut and Deneb, through to Regulus, the star
making the heart of Leo, the ferocious lion killed by Hercules. Of the 21 stars,
10 are in the northern hemisphere and eleven in the southern. We learn stellar
facts: the position, distance, brightness, composition and scientific
significance of each one, as well as who has observed them and the mythology
that surrounds them. Diagrams, photographs and many astronomical asides make
this a book to be enjoyed by would-be astronomers as well as experienced
observers. It is also an ideal companion for those inevitable cloudy nights.

For those who prefer to learn and share their passion with like-minded souls,
then joining an astronomical society could be the answer. If you live anywhere
in the British Isles—whether it is Aberdeen, Limerick, Sheffield or
Worthing—there is one near you to be found in the nine-page address list
that is included in 1998 Yearbook of Astronomy (Macmillan,
£12.99, ISBN 0333675371) edited by Patrick Moore—who else? Half the
book is dedicated to the year, and among other things helps observers in either
hemisphere find the positions of the planets on specially designed star charts,
as well as providing month-by-month descriptions of their movements.

There are 10 enlightening illustrated articles by noted amateur and
professional astronomers, covering matters such as the Galileo space probe and
its planned arrival at Io in 1999, and Cassini’s journey to Saturn, which will
be completed in 2004. Details of Cassini, its instrumentation and its teams of
scientific investigators, life on Mars, neutron stars and the success of amateur
astronomers in hunting for supernovae are all covered.

So you have no excuse. Go for it! Choose the book that’s for you, look up,
and enjoy the Universe. Make this resolution the one to keep.

Stuart Clark has brought together 150 of Hubble’s remarkable images in
Universe in Focus (Cassell, ÂŁ16.99, ISBN 0304349453). Some of the
most breathtaking are familiar because they have already appeared in newspapers
and on TV, but reproduction in Clark’s book is superb. The pictures show gaseous
knots and waves emerging from dying stars, pillars of dust incubating new stars,
and whole fields of galaxies which, from Earth, are no bigger than a speck in
the sky.

Clark is a professional astronomer and he skilfully interprets the
significance of each picture. First, he introduces us to the workings of the
instrument, before leading us deeper and deeper into space, past the planets,
through the stars and the galaxies and beyond. The book is clear and
colourful—a real delight for both the general reader and the more
astronomically literate.

Clark stresses that, alongside the success of Hubble, ground-based amateur
and professional telescopes are still indispensable. So many astronomers
will welcome the updated second edition of Gerald North’s Advanced Amateur
Astronomy (Cambridge University Press, ÂŁ18.95/ $24.95, ISBN
0521574072). The sections on telescopic hardware, adjustment and
astrophotography are now joined by a chapter on electronic imaging, and the book
has a superb introduction to the types of astronomical object most suited to
amateur investigation.

Alec Boksenberg has long been associated with Hubble science—one of the
cameras on board the spacecraft uses technology that he developed. He describes
his camera and its results in one of six articles in Exploring the
Universe edited by Peter Day (Oxford University Press, ÂŁ18.99, ISBN
0198500858). Each article stems from an illustrated lecture for Britain’s Royal
Institution. The RI lectures have an enviable reputation for introducing
contemporary science to a general audience. Day’s book takes this expertise
beyond the lecture hall for the public at large. Each article is by a noted
authority, and you will learn about the links between Ancient Egypt and modern
aspirin; of the discovery of radioactivity; and of a time when water, not
alcohol, came with a health warning.

Hubble’s most distant pictures show the Universe as it was billions of years
ago, at a time when galaxies were forming. But even Hubble cannot take pictures
of the very start of the Universe, the time of the big bang. We have to rely on
the skills of the illustrator. Big Bang by Heather Couper and Nigel
Henbest (Dorling Kindersley, ÂŁ9.99, ISBN 0751354929) with illustrations by
Luciano Corbella, has done that for us.

Of course, it’s a book with a big agenda. It covers the explosion that
created the Universe, everything that has been happening since (yes,
everything), the creation-beliefs of different cultures, the detective work of
astronomers, and even a look ahead to our ultimate fate. Words and illustrations
are skilfully mixed in a book that brings big, complicated ideas “down to
Earth”, making them easy to understand. This is for a family audience: the book
has too many pictures for an adult book, and too many ideas for a
child’s—something for everyone. And if you like your science on one page,
try the four-page fold-out encapsulating the Universe from its beginning to the
far future.

Illustrators and artists have often been interested in celestial objects. In
Painting the Heavens(Princeton University Press,
ÂŁ29.95/$45, ISBN 0691043981), Eileen Reeves looks at the interplay
of art and science in the age of Galileo, who in the early 17th century first
successfully turned the telescope towards the sky. Velázquez, Rubens,
Cigoli and Pacheco jostle with maculate Moons and the aurora borealis, but it’s
not the picture book you might expect. The notes and bibliography alone cover
more than 70 pages, and the pictures only eight, in this book which would barely
recognise a coffee-table.

FLYING saucers and aliens are part of life in the late 20th century. They’re
in comics and magazines, on the cinema screen and on TV. In the clubs and the
high street, “grey alien” faces adorn T-shirts and pendants.

Flying saucers and aliens are, in fact, big business. About 95 per cent of
all unidentified flying objects can be explained in terms of everyday things.
The rest remain unexplained. For some, these have become the subject of an
obsessive passion, itself worthy of study.

It all started fifty years ago, when pilot Kenneth Arnold reported seeing
nine silvery crescent-shaped objects as he flew over the Cascade range in
Washington state in the US. It was a slow news day: the press made his report a
front-page story. Arnold believed he’d seen a new type of US military aircraft.
Others thought differently. His description of the craft moving “like a saucer
skipping across the water” led a headline writer inadvertently to coin the term
“flying saucer”. And the flood of sightings has not abated.

Shelves of UFO books have been published to coincide with the 50th
anniversary of Arnold’s sighting in 1947. Anyone new to the subject will find
Alien Contact by Jenny Randles (Collins & Brown, ÂŁ14.99, ISBN
1855854155) a fine year-by-year introduction. Randles doesn’t get bogged down in
arguments about the truth of the incidents: readers are left alone to study the
stories and pictures and to work out for themselves what’s really going on.

In UFOs 1947—1997: Fifty Years of Flying Saucers, compiled by
Hilary Evans and Dennis Stacy (John Brown Publishing Ltd, ÂŁ16.99, ISBN
1870870999), an international group of UFO specialists covers the past fifty
years decade by decade, embellishing their effort with copious illustrations.
Kenneth Arnold’s report, the abduction experience of students on a camping trip
in 1976, and the story of what Zimbabwean children saw as they played during
break at school in 1994, are all included.

One of the most famous of all UFO cases is known simply as “Roswell”, after
the place in New Mexico where a craft and aliens were said to have crash-landed
just two weeks after Arnold’s sighting. New testimony occasionally arises,
fuelling intense debate about what landed and who recovered what. Michael
Hesemann and Philip Mantle’s well illustrated Beyond Roswell (Michael
O’Mara Books, £15.99, ISBN 185479227X) gives a detailed account of the
events of 1947, the period immediately after, and of the 1990s when, it is
claimed, archive film showing wreckage and an alien autopsy came to light.

Stanton Friedman has been involved in UFO research for a quarter of a
century. He has a self-confessed obsession with crashed saucers and Majestic
12—the US government’s secret body set up to investigate the Roswell
incident. In Top Secret/Majic (Michael O’Mara Books, £15.99, ISBN
1854792032) he embellishes his conviction that extraterrestrials do visit, and
are covered up. This is not for the sceptical: Friedman has little time for
them.

Larry Warren is another firm believer that aliens have landed. In 1980, he
was 19 years old, and a member of the US Air Force security police at
Bentwaters, Suffolk. On the night of 28 December, he saw a UFO land in
Rendlesham Forest close to the NATO base. Left at East Gate (Michael
O’Mara Books, £15.99, ISBN 1854792318) is a readable account of his
experiences, and the results of investigations carried out with coauthor Peter
Robbins.

Kjartan Poskitt’s The Gobsmacking Galaxy, the latest in “The
Knowledge” series (Scholastic Children’s Books, £3.50, ISBN 059019013X)
turns the tables. Sid goes to visit aliens, though his closest encounter is with
a black hole. Sid is an imaginary character used to introduce pre-teens and
younger teenagers to our Galaxy and beyond. The rest of the cast includes Morag
and her Scottish dance music, kangaroos, and a washing machine, all of which
feature in numerous cartoons. Poskitt’s irreverent approach works well. Young
readers will enjoy their imaginary journey in space and will recognise when
Poskitt is supplying fact or merely having fun.

But can the same be said about their elders and their UFO books? Can they
decide what is fact, speculation, misinformation or plain hoaxing?

Comet Hale-Bopp was greeted with a much more subdued fanfare of publicity.
But it has turned out to be a great success. As I have gone about my daily
business, I’ve been greeted by the smiling, triumphant faces of friends and
passing acquaintances who are eager to tell me they have found it. This one
observational success has introduced them to the pleasures of the night sky, and
they have suddenly realised that the world of astronomy is not beyond them.

Anyone wanting to find out more about Hale-Bopp can turn to Robert Burnham’s
very readable Find and Enjoy Comet Hale-Bopp (Cambridge University
Press, ÂŁ8.95, ISBN 0 521 58636 4). In five straightforward chapters, he
deals with the nature of comets, the way Hale-Bopp was discovered, its progress
across our sky and how to photograph it. And finally, assuming that you have
caught the comet bug, Burnham offers tips on how to discover a comet of your
own. After April the comet favours those who live in the southern hemisphere.
But hurry—it is moving away from the Sun and Earth very quickly.

Lots of good basic advice about imaging comets and other night sky wonders is
included in The Art and Science of CCD Astronomy, edited by David
Ratledge (Springer-Verlag, ÂŁ19.95, ISBN 3 540 76103 9). CCDs, or
charge-coupled devices, are silicon chips placed at the focus of a telescope
instead of the eye or a photographic film. Here a CCD can often record objects
and details that are far too faint for the naked eye to see.

All 12 contributors to this book use CCDs and publish their images on the
Internet. Their aim is to pass on their practical knowledge and experience.
Their advice covers the equipment you need and how to get good results when
imaging subjects as different as the Sun, Moon and distant galaxies. The book
also helps when it comes to taking images from the suburbs of cities.

Any view those of us on the ground get of space is courtesy of the weather.
The Hubble Space Telescope, however, now has a clear view 24 hours a day, 365
days of the year from its vantage point about 600 kilometres above Earth. The
orbiting telescope has been looking into space on our behalf since 1990, but has
only been a real success since its repair in 1993. As the title would indicate,
all but a handful of the pictures in Gems of Hubble by Jacqueline Mitton
and Stephen Maran (Cambridge University Press, ÂŁ8.95, ISBN 0 521 57100 6)
were taken after 1993. The 50 images transport us from Mars, through the outer
Solar System and beyond to the stars. Dramatic images of newly born stars, the
complex gas shells in a dying star, colliding galaxies, and the faintest
galaxies ever seen are all included.

The photographic approach is also used in Endeavour Views the Earth
(Cambridge University press, ÂŁ7.95, ISBN 0 521 57099 9). The 37
photographs compiled by Robert Brown were chosen from more than 5000 photographs
taken by the crew of the space shuttle Endeavour during an eight-day flight in
September 1992. The book succeeds admirably in letting us view Earth as a living
map, in experiencing the forces of the weather and in recognising natural and
manmade changes. And we can share the crew’s experiences of space flight through
their choice of photographs.

The New Astronomy by Nigel Henbest and Michael Marten (Cambridge
University Press, ÂŁ19.95, ISBN 0 521 40871 7) moves beyond the merely
visual to let us experience the awe-inspiring beauty of the radio, infrared,
ultraviolet and X-ray skies. All these images are rendered in stunning false
colour with details of the host of ground-based and space instrumentation that
helped us to obtain this refreshingly new insight into the heavens. Over 200 new
images appear in this second edition.

That’s probably why most grown-ups secretly love reading children’s books. In
the main, they’re not just fun to read. They also tackle some of the most
important and fundamental questions.

Answering children’s questions requires considerable skill, however. And
Russell Stannard certainly has this. Letters to Uncle Albert (Faber
& Faber, ÂŁ4.99, ISBN 0 571 17508 2) is built around the same avuncular
character used in his previous books to explain Einstein’s science to young
people. In this book, aimed at eight-year-olds upwards, children write to Uncle
Albert, and their questions and pictures are reproduced in original form. How
will the world end? Where is the centre of the Universe? Why is the Moon white?
This book is a little gem. Each of the 60 or so questions is answered with
thought and care. And if your question isn’t included, you can write to Uncle
Albert’s Post Bag, providing the raw material for the next book.

Terry Jennings’s 101 Optical Illusions (Wayland, £7.99, ISBN 0
7500 1899 2) will probably appeal to everyone over six. His visual tricks and
experiments divide into three sections—sight, perception and movement.
Discover when your eyes fail to tell you the truth, how your brain interprets
what you see, and how it can be tricked into thinking that a series of still
pictures is actually moving.

While you must marshal pencil, paper, scissors and sticky tape to do some of
the book’s “tricks”, many others, such as watching a ghost appear before your
eyes, require no props. The book was an immediate success with my son Owen, aged
six, who conscientiously studied every page in turn and then started all over
again from the beginning. His verdict: “Absolutely brilliant, can I take it to
˛őł¦łó´Ç´Ç±ô?”

Owen and his schoolmates can also get an ideal introduction to astronomy with
four books by Patrick Moore (Random House, ÂŁ2.50 each). They cover The
Sun and Moon (ISBN 0 09 967911 6), The Planets (ISBN 0 09 967891
8), Comets and Shooting Stars (ISBN 0 09 967901 9) and The
Stars (ISBN 0 09 967881 0) and are beautifully illustrated with colourful
and realistic artwork by Paul Doherty. The text is simple but packed with
information—the best kind of nutrient for hungry young minds.

Moving on in astronomy and up in age group, Ellen, my eight-year-old,
recommends Stars and Planets by David Levy (Wayland, ÂŁ9.99, ISBN 0
7500 1900 X). This is a large-format book that covers, spread by spread, the
members of the Solar System, stars, galaxies and telescopes. According to Ellen,
the pictures are great and “there are lots of interesting facts to learn”.

For a novel approach to understanding some of the confusions that can so
easily arise in science, try Gary Soucie’s Lenses and Prisms and Other
Scientific Things (Wiley, £7.99, ISBN 0 471 08626 6). With 40 “What’s
the difference?” questions, Soucie deals with all manner of scientific odd
couples and their differences, such as mass and weight, fission and fusion, oil
and gasoline, elastic and plastic, cement and concrete, and RAM and ROM. The
text is straightforward, and the line drawings clear. But it is difficult, first
off, to see which age group the book is aimed at. My guess is the scientifically
literate teenager.

And finally, let me pay homage to the role that science fiction has played in
expanding our minds and encouraging us to think about our surroundings.
Space Stories by Mike Ashley (Robinson, ÂŁ4.99, ISBN 1 85487 451 9) is
a collection of 25 classic tales from some of the world’s most imaginative
science fiction writers. The stories are arranged so the early-teen reader
journeys first into the Solar System and then into deep space. A closing chapter
on what really is out there offers valuable help to those needing to distinguish
fact from fiction.

Given a spare couple of hours, Melanie Melton could persuade anyone that they
could both understand and enjoy the astronomical wonders of the night sky. Her
Observing for the Fun of It (Kalmbach, ÂŁ14.95/$14.95, ISBN
0 913135 26 7) is aptly named. She promises, and delivers, a first-class
introduction to stargazing for the whole family. Melton’s positive approach to
astronomy and her sensible advice enliven every page. Her years of experience as
an educational specialist at the Lowell Observatory have taught her that things
can, and do, go wrong. “A little confused? No problem … a quick
demonstration will help,” she says, and off goes the reader to the next step.
The constellations, the Moon, planets, meteors, eclipses and comets are all
covered, and she stresses the joys of using binoculars and small telescopes. The
book has a slight slant towards observers in the northern hemisphere and to
readers acquainted with American English, but don’t let this put you off. If you
are an absolute beginner and want to have fun looking at the night sky, this is
the book for you.

After those first few hours gazing upwards, turn to A Walk Through the
Heavens (Cambridge University Press, ÂŁ6.95/$9.95, ISBN 0 521
46980 5) by Milton Heifetz and Wil Tirion. This is a sort of road atlas for
northern skies, furnishing the reader with helpful maps and clear instructions.
I was rather irritated, however, that the maps were not always placed next to
the instructions. If it’s cloudy, this book still has its uses, providing a
number of legends associated with the constellations. These have been somewhat
sanitised for the sake of political correctness, and occasionally Greek
mythology has been sidelined and overtaken by Native American stories.

If the sky is very dark and clear, you can pick out about 4000 stars with the
naked eye. With a normal pair of binoculars, this figure leaps to a confusing 40
000. But don’t worry—let Patrick Moore be your guide. His Exploring
the Night Sky with Binoculars (Cambridge University Press,
ÂŁ19.95/$29.95 ISBN 0 521 55492 6) will not only help you to choose
the best binoculars for the job, but will also enable you to decide what to look
at, as well as when and where to look for it. This updated third edition covers
all 88 constellations, as well as the lunar landscape and other wonders of the
night sky.

Jean Dragesco’s High Resolution Astrophotography (Cambridge
University Press, ÂŁ24.95/$39.95, ISBN 0 521 41588 8) is the latest
in the series of practical manuals for serious amateur astronomers. It is full
of superb photographs taken by the world’s most competent amateurs. These are a
great inspiration when it comes to trying to get the best images from your
telescope. Atmospheric conditions, telescopic and photographic equipment and the
selection of suitable celestial “models” are all covered.

Nothing in astronomy really beats looking at real heavenly bodies in the real
night sky. But if it’s cloudy, try the VDU. The animated night sky featured on
CD-ROMs such as Discover Astronomy (Maris Multimedia, ÂŁ17.99) is
an excellent way of seeing speedily, if a little jerkily, just how a celestial
scene changes as a function of time. The real joy of this easy-to-use CD-ROM is
its animation. It is great fun to watch the big bang happen. And then, in the
next few minutes, you can form a galaxy, a sun and a solar system to go with it.
The CD-ROM contains about 50 animations and simulations, supported by a gallery
of photographic images and an informative text from the Penguin Dictionary
of Astronomy.

If you need a CD-ROM to broaden your understanding of the Universe, and
especially if you live in Canada, then Fundamental Astronomy from the
Mount Allison University is a must. The disc contains more than 500 text screens
covering such topics as observational skills, the choice and use of astronomical
equipment, the night sky, planets, stars, galaxies and cosmology. The text is
aimed at older teenagers, and is well supported by images, animation and video
sections. The CD-ROM contains hints as to where Canadian observers can get help
with astronomical problems. And there is a section on famous astronomers. Yes,
you’ve guessed it, 10 out of 11 of them are Canadian.