The Southern Sky Guide

This modest but useful book includes background information on stars, planets and constellations, and star charts with interesting objects pointed out. All from a southern hemisphere perspective. It's written in an informal, conversational style, and the star charts (by Wil Tirion) are clear and well-organized. The charts aren't the largest or the deepest magnitude, but there are other references for that, like Sky Atlas 2000.0. A particularly handy reference for us northerners who visit Down Under: I used it myself when planning a trip to Australia. Handy for people who live there, too.

This book has well laid out and attractive star charts but is used best as a desk reference and not as a field reference. Like most of Tirion's Atlases, I think the charts are one magnitude from being truly useful. Under very dark skies in the country the charts would be more then adequate to find the deep sky objects, but in a moderately polluted urban environment there is insufficient magnitude detail to star hop adequately. I would say this book is excellent for beginners or newcomers looking for an introduction to the Southern skies. So I give this 4 stars, also partly because there is a lack of such introductory books of the Southern skies.