Star Gazing in The Books Store

• Binocular Messier Club
• Urban Observing Club
• Deep Sky Binocular Club
• Double Star Club
• RASC Finest NGC List

The latest photos from Hubble's recent discoveries, with fascinating new and updated information.

After 17 years, 25,000 astronomical targets and more than 700,000 images, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) continues to return images and data that amaze astronomers. Within the past few months alone, the Hubble has revealed a gold mine of just-formed star systems in the newborn Universe, provided detailed views of a second red spot emerging on Jupiter, and confirmed that monster black holes lurk at the center of galaxies.

This brand new and updated edition features:

• 80 new full-color images
• A new introduction that reveals Hubble's future
• The data behind Pluto's recent demotion to non-planetary status
• Hubble's most important and fascinating new discoveries
• Explanations of how these new discoveries are revising scientific understanding of the Universe.

New photographs reveal astonishing and previously unseen details of what once appeared only as gray blurs or dots on a star map. Examples include the Eagle Nebula and the birth of a star; newly formed stars blowing a cavity in the center of the Small Magellanic Cloud; colliding Antennae galaxies; and a massive galaxy just under assembly.

Hubble transports readers beyond our solar system to galaxies millions -- even billions -- of light years away. These dramatic, unforgettable new images bring into sharp focus the ways in which the Universe is unfolding in new and astonishing ways.

Loran and GPS notwithstanding, there will always be a place for the sextant aboard any blue-water boat, if for no other reason than the thrill and mystery of finding one's position on earth by gazing at the heavens. Here is the indispensable reference that should accompany the instrument aboard. Cmdr. Bruce Bauer, a professional navigator and master mariner with the U.S. Merchant Marine, has distilled years of hands-on experience into an eminently readable guide to buying, adjusting, using, and repairing sextants.

The Sextant Handbook is dedicated to the premise that electronic navigation devices, while too convenient to disregard, are too vulnerable to rely on exclusively. The book is designed to make beginner and expert alike conversant with this most beautiful and functional of the navigator's tools. Topics include:

• Assembly and Disassembly
• Vital Adjustments
• Avoiding Problems
• Rough Weather Sightings
• Oiling and Cleaning
• Immersion Baths
• Emergency Silvering
• Finding and Buying Used Sextants
• And Much More

Dickinson's star charts are very handy, each covering a reasonable field of view and mapping the most interesting amateur objects. He gives good advice for planet watching, which he notes "is one of the few astronomical activities that can be conducted almost as well from the city as from dark rural locations."

365 Starry Nights is a unique and fascinating introduction to astronomy designed to give you a complete, clear picture of the sky every night of the year. Divided into 365 concise, illustrated essays, it focuses on the aesthetic as well as the scientific aspects of stargazing. It offers the most up-to-date information available, with hundreds of charts, drawings, and maps-that take you beyond the visible canopy of stars and constellations into the unseen realm of nebulae and galaxies.

This simple yet substantial text is full of critical information and helpful hints on how to observe the stars; describe their position; calculate their age, brightness, and distance; and much more. Whether you observe the sky with a telescope or the naked eye, 365 Starry Nights makes the infinite intimate and brings the heavens within your grasp. Keep this invaluable, informative guide close at hand, and you'll find that the sky is the limit 365 nights a year.