Sky Vistas

A guide whose core is a descriptive tour of the celestial sights: open and globular clusters, nebulae, galaxies, and large areas of sky. It goes beyond ordinary descriptions to tell the reader something about each object's nature. This book is primarily a practical guide for observers with normal or giant binoculars, or richest-field telescopes, who wish to get the most out of their instruments. Apart from that, it is also a readable, well-illustrated book for arm-chair observers.The central point of interest is wide-field astronomy - areas of the night sky that are particularly rich in objects. The Milky Way itself is the ultimate wide-field object and therefore its general features and the regions rich in clusters and nebulae are described. A chapter on clusters emphasizes open clusters best viewed in binoculars followed by a chapter on large but faint nebulae invisible to standard telescopes but visible to binoculars. The last chapter deals with fields in which groups of bright galaxies can be seen.The full-page color and black-and-white photos are one of the best features of this book and make it appealing to the general reader. The practical observer is shown exactly where objects are with respect to one another.