Celestial Delights: The Best Astronomical Events Through 2010

by Francis Reddy, Greg Walz-Chojnacki
revised edition (October 2002)
Paperback - 288 pages; 83 charts and figures; 38 photos (15 in color); 24 tables
from Celestial Arts Books

Celestial Delights is a beginning observer's month-by-month guide to the astronomical sights and events of the first decade of the 21st Century. It covers common beginner's concerns like the best times to view different planets, moon phases, eclipses of the sun and moon, meteor showers, and the like. Say, for example, that you want to observe next year's rare transit of Venus. You'll find in Celestial Delights that the transit will not be visible from Southern California, but a trip to the east coast or Europe will let you see the event. The many photos and diagrams make this a good introduction to basic astronomy. While the annual Observer's Handbook of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada is more detailed and comprehensive (but also limited to just one year), Celestial Delights is much more "user friendly" for the novice backyard observer.

"Celestial Delights makes an almost complete short course in descriptive popular astronomy. . . . The feature that makes this book stand out is a text crammed with easy-to-use diagrams -- probably the best we've seen. The style is so breezy we wish we'd written it ourselves. Indeed, after reading this book, if you don't understand how the heavens work and how to find objects in the ever-changing night sky, you never will. Why didn't someone think of writing one of these before?"
-- Sky & Telescope, Nov. 1993 (review of earlier edition)