The best telescope books

50 Things to See with a Telescope covers everything you need to know to identify constellations, planets, stars, galaxies, nebulae, and more. Beginner stargazers will find star hopping easy with clearly plotted routes on images of the sky and detailed views from a backyard telescope. 

This easy-to-read, fully illustrated stargazing book will enrich your experience of the skies above. For those living south of the equator, a Southern Hemisphere edition of this book is also available. This book is part of an award-winning series, including: 50 Things to See on the Moon, 50 Animals that have been to Space, 50 Space Missions that Changed the World, and 110 Things to See with a Telescope (coming July 2021).

Lavishly illustrated popular exposition of the Hubble Space Telescope, how and why it was created, who built it and fought for it, who used it, and how it has changed our view of the universe.

I’ve Been Walking, the new monograph from writer and photographer Janet Sternburg captures the soul of Los Angeles as it slowed to a stop. When the streets emptied in Spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Sternburg donned a mask and gloves and took a camera into her neighborhood of Little Tokyo. She explored the surrounding area, using photographs to capture her journey. “For a while I walked through Los Angeles’ empty streets, seeing mostly what was desolate,” she writes. “Then I started to see traces of human presence. I walked photographing what I’ve come to think of as a kind of fullness—an enlargement of the senses that can be found in the midst of emptiness. I do not mean to turn the griefs and losses caused by COVID-19 into artistic gain. I do mean that we are enlarged when we become part of the landscape of all of us.”

I’ve Been Walking expresses profound humanity, gesturing toward the social and personal resonances of the 2020 shutdown.

50 Things to See with a Telescope covers everything you need to know to identify constellations, planets, stars, galaxies, nebulae, and more. Beginner stargazers will find star hopping easy with clearly plotted routes on images of the sky and detailed views from a backyard telescope. 

This easy-to-read, fully illustrated stargazing book will enrich your experience of the skies above. For those living south of the equator, a Southern Hemisphere edition of this book is also available. This book is part of an award-winning series, including: 50 Things to See on the Moon, 50 Animals that have been to Space, 50 Space Missions that Changed the World, and 110 Things to See with a Telescope (coming July 2021).

As a student and observer of the Moon, I always wanted a perfect atlas for use at the telescope and in my study, so Maurice Collins and I created it. Our 21st Century Atlas of the Moon is beautifully illustrated with images from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which still circles the Moon every 2 hours with cameras clicking. LRO imaged Apollo Astronauts’ footprints on the Moon; impossibly tiny to be seen from Earth but our atlas shows exactly where to see astronaut landing sites. Lunar craters are named for famous scientists, and with the 21st Century Atlas of the Moon you can find the home crater for each of these humans, as well as the seas of Serenity and Tranquility – but be cautious of the Ocean of Storms!