NightWatch: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe. 4th ed.

Sandy Campbell is a reference librarian in the Science and Technology Library at the University of Alberta.

In the preface, Dickinson tells us that he has extensively fine-tuned
and updated this 4th edition of his popular guide, adding a chapter on
the southern hemisphere sky and replacing many images with superior
ones, made possible through advances in digital photography. The book is
an excellent introduction to stargazing.

Dickinson begins by giving us an ingenious way to understand the size
of the universe—“The Universe in Eleven Steps”—a sequence of 11
drawings with the Earth at the centre, each drawing having “a cubic
volume of space one million times larger than the one before.”

The next chapter gives some of the most basic information and
techniques required for backyard astronomy. The fourth chapter explains
the northern hemisphere night sky in the different seasons and Chapter
12 the southern hemisphere night sky. “Stargazing Equipment,” the
fifth chapter, gives an overview that will allow any beginner to select
the essential tools for getting started.

From the sixth chapter on, Dickinson discusses the celestial phenomena
and bodies that can be seen with the naked eye, binocular, or
telescopes; these include star clusters, nebulas, galaxies, the planets,
sun, moon, comets, meteors, and auroras. The 20 star charts in this
section are the part that most readers will have open next to their
telescopes; sturdy coil binding means the guide can lie flat on a
backyard surface.

The moon is the celestial body that most novices initially observe.
More photographs and charts in this section would be useful, such as an
image of this: “The low sun angle makes the floor of Serenitatis look
as if it is riddled with the underground trails of giant lunar
rodents.” For a more detailed guide, Dickinson recommends The Backyard
Astronomer’s Guide, a book he co-authored.