The Great Atlas of the Stars

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

There are two remarkable things about this book. The first is the
quality of images. One of them, “an extreme close-up of a tiny section
of the Milky Way,” shows millions of stars looking like sparkling sand
on a beach. The second remarkable thing is that Japanese
astrophotographer Akiru Fujii’s folio-sized images of the
constellations are the same scale as the sky viewed by the unaided eye.
This means that when you are using the book in your backyard, what you
see on the page is about the same size as what you see in the sky, which
makes constellation finding much easier.

Most of the 33 constellations in the atlas are visible from the
Northern Hemisphere. Each image has a transparent overlay sheet with the
lines linking the stars of the constellations and names of some of the
celestial bodies. For each constellation, between three and six of the
most significant bodies have “I.D. Cards” that give the star’s
luminosity compared with the sun, its distance in light years, the
dimensions or diameter of the star, and minimum viewing requirements. At
the end of the book is a constellation chart giving some of the same
information, a glossary, and an index. Highly recommended for all types
of libraries and for recreational stargazers.