The Practical Astronomer

Designed for amateur astronomers, especially beginners, this volume provides practical advice on how to look at the heavens and what to look for, throughout the yearly cycle of the sky. Although it is pre-eminently a "how-to-do-it" book, there are special boxes and features in each chapter which amplify the descriptions of heavenly bodies that readers can see for themselves with explanations provided by modern astronomers. The text also describes and explains such curiosities as the strange history of the belief in Martian canals, and the discovery of Neptune on paper, by means of its disturbance of Saturn's orbit, before it was first seen through a telescope.