Night Sky With the Naked Eye: How to Find Planets, Constellations, Satellites and Other Night Sky Wonders Without a Telescope

This book won't help you learn the constellations or find objects in the night sky. It lacks the monthly star charts and detailed orientation information necessary for the task. The best book for this purpose is "The Stars: A New Way to See They" by H.A. Ray, an oldie but goodie that has never been surpassed. When you've learned the constellations, come back to this book as it contains interesting information about stars, the moon, the planets, and meteors that will enhance your appreciation of the night sky as viewed with the naked eye. The writing is accessible and information is presented very clearly. The print is very tiny and difficult to make out. The diagrams are helpful but nothing special. Like so many others, the author purports to be interested in naked-eye observation but much of the information he presents has been gleaned with the telescope. Overall, this book contains some interesting information but is easily dispensable.

I really enjoy Bob King's online articles and was eager to read his first book. I'm not a beginner sky-gazer, but I still picked up a couple of interesting tips and tidbits that I either didn't know or had never really thought through before. I like how Bob starts with events that are regular and bright enough to see from cities or suburbs like ISS passes, and gets neophyte sky-gazers used to using all the online resources that are now available. By the time you get to the last chapters that covers rarer events like aurora and eclipses, you'll be all set knowing when and where to go for the best views. Great use of explanatory graphics and selections of "you can take this too" camera & tripod pictures of celestial events. No over-use of long-exposure astrophotos that can give a false sense of expectation to new stargazers. Would make a great gift to any young person interested in astronomy, or anyone who enjoys the outdoors and want to learn more about the night sky. Hopefully Bob writes a follow-up book in the same style introducing binocular or small-telescope astronomy!

This book is great for adults and young people who share an interest in astronomy or just star gazing.An informative and completely accessible book full of quality graphics and demonstrations.I always enjoy Astro Bob's newspaper column and found this book to be just as educational and useful.

I'm using the book to look at the sky when we have a clear night. Takes a while to get used to the book and photos.

Very disappointed when I opened book. Very difficult to read. Font is extremely hard to see - small and thin. Captions under pictures even smaller. Not much contrast on colored pages. I have several good books: e.g. Turn Left at Orion, 365 Stary Nights.

Excellent book for the beginner or seasoned stargazer. Bob King is very interesting to read in any case and he does a great job of introducing astronomy to anyone with this engaging book!

GREAT review of the night sky using our very first set of astronomical tools: our eyes!!

Summertime is around the corner (in the Northern Hemisphere) and for sky watchers, like me, we start to get excited because the core of Milky Way is coming into view. Normally, when I go out to the mountains or desert for a night of astrophotography, I take my three telescopes, tracking mount, and a host of other equipment. But you don’t need all that when looking to capture the Milky Way core. You just need a camera and fast wide-angle lens. You also have another option: You can just find a place with dark skies, put down a blanket, lie down, look up, and let your imagination take you to distant worlds.The fact that we can observe so much of our solar system, our galaxy, and even the Andromeda galaxy that’s 2.5 million light years away, with just our naked eye often goes unappreciated. Sometimes, when spending hours trying to get that perfect photo of the Whirlpool Galaxy, it’s easy to literally have a narrow a field of view, and miss the great nighttime show happening all around us. It was with great excitement therefore that I picked up Bob King’s new book Night Sky with the Naked Eye.King is a regular contributor to Sky and Telescope and the curator of his Astro Bob website (https://astrobob.areavoices.com/). I highly recommend that everyone interested in astronomy and astrophotography read his contributions regularly. In addition, his book is a must read, especially for those new to looking to the heavens but even for more experienced observers.King’s book starts with our International Space Station (ISS) and describes how to find out when it’s going overhead and where to look. When introducing new skywatchers to the excitement of finding things in the night sky, I’ve found that an ISS overfly has presented a great opportunity. Everyone loves a game, and you can make a great game of seeing who can find the ISS first. King describes many details about the space station, and reminds us of the dynamics of why we can see it and how it disappears as it moves into the Earth’s shadow.As an astronomy merit badge counselor for the Boy Scouts (Troop 4, La Jolla, California), the material in King’s book will provide me with a very nice adjunct to the information presented in the official Scout pamphlet. It also has prompted me to think of new ways to get young people (and maybe some older people too) thinking about how the physics of the solar system and our galaxy work.For example, when we observe the moon shortly after a new moon we can often see more than just the bright sunlit crescent. We can see the rest of the moon’s face in a shadowy grey. Why is that? If you don’t know, here’s an invitation to read King’s book.Here’s another example. When setting up a telescope, if your mount is like mine you’ll have to do a polar alignment. To do that, you have to start with finding Polaris. But why is Polaris the “north star?” Has the Earth’s axis always pointed at Polaris? Will it always be pointed at Polaris? Again, if you don’t know the answers, it’s time to pick up King’s book.The book proceeds to cover all the planets we can observe without the aid of binoculars or telescopes, the moon, constellations, asterisms, stars, double stars, star clusters, the Andromeda galaxy, meteor showers, and aurora. It also highlights software that’s available to assist observations, including www.heavens-above.com and the program Stellarium, two of my personal favorites. Night Sky with the Naked Eye is a thorough treatment of how to appreciate the night sky that imbues King’s emotional connection to the activity. I expect you’ll find his enthusiasm contagious.-- David Fogel, Ph.D., Curator of www.davidfogel.com

A beautifully written book, Bob's enthusiasm for his subject shines through and is infectious. It's well illustrated throughout and the directions given to find objects in the sky are simple to follow. Each themed chapter has activities to try on the next clear night and there are links to websites for further information and to useful apps. I can't recommend this book highly enough to anyone with even a vague interest in the night sky

Very helpful to find Your way on the heaven

Book arrived on good condition.