Deep-sky Wonders: A Tour of the Universe [Hardcover]

Back in the early 1940's, Walter Scott "Scotty" Houston began writing a column for Sky & Telescope Magazine called "Deep-Sky Wonders." He continued to write this column until his death. Then ten years lapsed before Sue French picked the column back up in July of 1999 and she continues to write the column for Sky & Telescope today. This wonderful hardbound book is a compilation of her monthly columns and I consider it a terrific source of information for the novice and experienced observer alike. The chapters are arranged by month making it easy for the user to pick out targets appropriate for the time of year. Each month contains eight or nine columns giving a wealth of targets to choose from.

Now, many of these objects require a large aperture scope and/or very dark skies, however I have personally viewed a large number of these objects with my 3" and 4" refractors from my suburban home, as I have been following her column since she started it back in 1999. This is a rather massive book, over 300 pages, hard bound, with a glossy paper cover. There are many full color illustrations and images to grab the eye, making this a book that I love to simply browse through as much as I use it for resource material. The chapters are laid out basically the same as in the magazine columns. There is a target chart with magnitudes, angular sizes, and celestial coordinates; star charts; full color photos and illustrations; and of course the text giving the reader full access to these celestial gems in the sky. Sue's writing style is thorough, giving the reader not only information about the objects but instructions on how to find them as well. Still, I might recommend (especially for the novice observer) using a larger star atlas or computer software as an aid in finding the targets. The reader will find Sue's knowledge extensive, and she shares that knowledge in the text about the objects, the constellations they reside in, and often some history as well. I almost always learn something knew from Sue, regardless of how commonly known the object is. Sue's choice of objects is highly varied, from galaxies to gas clouds to multiple stars. She uses targets from commons lists, like the Messier Objects, but she also pulls from a number of perhaps lesser known lists, such as the Sharpless or Barnard catalogs. I consider this book to be a valuable addition to anyone's personal library, as it is so rare to get such a combination of knowledge, observing experience, teaching skills, and professional writing abilities all from one author.

David Elosser
Kernersville, NC

This is generally a enjoyable read that covers a smattering of objects that you can look at in the night sky on a season-by-season basis. But I expected a reference book, and instead got a collection of articles.

There are aspects of this that vary from whimsical to useless to downright silly:

-- Typical chapter titles: "By Jiminy!" "Copeland's Lost Trigon" "Magical Things" and "The Immortal Beast" All kinda cutsey-poo, but not exactly descriptive of the content.

-- Now and then, the author takes a chance alignment of stars in the sky (aka an asterism) and just makes up a name for it. This "create your own" style of "objects" to be seen is not appreciated on my end; especially when the author has the further audacity to assign "catalog numbers" to these pseudo-objects.

Once you actually get into the text, things get better. The charts provided don't cover everything, but they are detailed enough to be useful in the field. By that, I mean they could be used to find something, if you don't mind getting dew on your book. Object descriptions are meaningful and often provide an object's appearance using telescopes of varying apertures. And there is a table somewhere in each article where you can find the celestial coordinates, apparent size, Uranometria chart, etc of each object mentioned.

So what's the problem? Getting where you want to go. For example, you might recall a nice planetary nebula in Gemini and decide you want to look at it again. How do you find it in the book? If you can't remember the NGC number, good luck. There is no comprehensive catalog, and you'll get no help from the chapter titles. With experience, you can probably guess what season of the year it is best viewed. From there, you'll have to painstakingly search through a fourth of the book to find it.

As another reviewer said, this book will serve you fairly well on your coffee table. But as a reference book, it fell well short of my expectations.

I finally received this book after waiting a few months for publishing and it was all worth it. As an amateur astrophotographer/astronomer, this is a beautiful book to look at and read. The photographs are gorgeous and produced by all the great names in current astrophotography like Gendler,Block,and Misti.The prose is mixed with poetry by Sky and Telescopes' Sue French, already well known for her beautifully written magazine column.
The book is set up like the monthly columns with the four seasons as major sections and specific constellations and areas of the sky then receiving specific discussion and photographs of star clusters, planetary nebulae, galaxies and even asterisms of interest.The book induced me to try my luck with Planetary NGC 6781 in Aquila and it turned out pretty nice.Maybe not at Mr.Block's level ,but I'll take it til I can go deeper.
Its a beautiful and useful book, worth the wait and the price.