Binocular Astronomy

This is the only binoculars-specific astronomy book I own, but it is a beauty. Craig Crossen is a wonderful writer, one who makes you want to run out with your binos and check out the things he describes. He also manages to cram an entire mini-course on the structure of the Milky Way into his Binocular Astronomy book, and includes a good serving of the famous E. E. Barnard photographs of Milky Way starfields. Add to this the fact that the book ends with a reprint of Tirion and Crossen's Bright Star Atlas, and you are ready to go out and observe (provided you've remembered to bring your binoculars!). ALL amateur astronomy books should be this good, this complete and this inspiring.

This book is INCREDIBLE. It covers many deep sky objects for binoculars and also increases your understanding of our galaxy. The writer does not only explain deep sky objects for binoculars by season but also explains why some kinds of objects are very dense at some constellations and rare at some other part of sky. Also this book explains what actually happens in the objects that we look. Also this book includes Bright Star Atlas. So you don't need any other atlas to follow the book. This book is for both beginners and intermediate level observers.

I'm not a huge fan of binocular astronomy, but I bought this to learn more about it. I'm still not a huge fan of binocular astronomy--but this book has added very considerably to my telescope-based observing. The reason is that many of the targets discussed (beautifully) in this book are tough for binoculars esp. in suburban skies such as mine, but are easy and extremely rewarding through a small telescope (e.g. my 5 inch reflector). Yet these very rewarding objects are largely omitted from telescope gudebooks (perhaps since they're too easy!). Thus, this book provides a huge collection of great targets for a small scope. And it is far more than a mere list (though convenient lists are provided). The astronomical and astrophysical context of the objects described is provided very nicely--but learning this is optional, so the user of this book can create the desired balance between "theory" and pretty observations. There are only a few things I don't like about the book--no index (but the organizatin and table of contents are excellent, so essentially make up for this), no discussion of the moon, which is a great binocular object, and nothing about sketching your observations. Nevertheless it is a tour de force, filled with great information, organized well, and with very high production quality. I would strongly recommend this to all amateurs with telescopes (and maybe binoculars,too!).