How We See the Sky: A Naked-Eye Tour of Day and Night
- Dec 4, 2019
- 3 min read
★★★☆☆
When I was a kid, I was fascinated with the stars. I got a telescope for Christmas at the age of 11 (much later than I would have liked), studied the star wheel, and poured over books on the planets and solar system from the local library. I remember watching eclipses through my uncle’s welding mask, from inside a refrigerator box into which we’d poked a hole, and, during a school day, with sheets of black construction paper. As an adult, my love of the celestial globe has remained, more or less, intact, and I savor any opportunity to lie back wherever light pollution is low and delight in the night sky (Custer State Park, in South Dakota; Death Valley National Park; and Clam Lake, Wisconsin are notable highlights). In May 2014, the Camelopardalis meteor shower dazzled with hundreds of shooting stars per hour. And in August 2017, as an early birthday present from the heavens, we were, from our doorstep, almost dead-center in the path of totality for the total solar eclipse. I still have our glasses. On a couple of occasions, I’ve even managed to incorporate my love of outer space into my design work. So when an old friend, and fellow stargazer, put Thomas Hockey’s book on my radar, I knew I had to read it.
Thomas Hockey is a professor of astronomy at the University of Northern Iowa and How We See the Sky is his consumer-friendly guide to the friendly skies. It’s an excellent primer for astro-enthusiasts, covering all the stargazing basics—the way the visible universe rotates through our view as night turns to day from season to season; the sun’s and moon’s motions through the celestial globe; the appearance of solstices, eclipses, and planets, and how these are accounted for in different kinds of calendars—as well as a healthy dose of astroarchaeology for good measure. Seemingly everything you’d want to get you started on a naked-eye exploration of the sky is here.
So why only three stars? Two reasons: format and style. The book is meant to be read from cover to cover, which is fine for taking in the information the first go-round, but not terribly useful as a reference tool when you need a little reminder on how or when to best view some phenomenon or other. The sidebars that pop up from time to time are obnoxious. With the book’s slight dimensions, they aren’t so much sidebars as they are chapter interrupters. A larger size would have given these asides their proper place—and made room for larger illustrations, diagrams, and photographs. Finally, and though I hate to stereotype, Hockey writes like an academic scientist. He tries hard not to be dry and stuffy but doesn’t quite manage to pull it off. Plus, the jokes peppered throughout, though certainly authentically Hockey, are also totally hokey (e.g., “Would not the popular vampire-novel series sound cooler if it had been titled Astronomical Twilight?”).
Still, there’s probably not a better single resource that covers the ground Hockey does. My complaints, though valid, are ultimately minor. With the book’s easily identifiable and well-contained chapters, as well as its detailed and robust index, finding a specific piece of information when you want or need it isn’t an overwhelming challenge. If you’re interested in sky watching but don’t quite know where to start or how to untangle what appears to be a mass (mess) of undifferentiated stars, How We See the Sky is a good place to start. You might even find the bad jokes endearing.
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