Sky & Telescope - December 2019 - 57

BOOK REVIEW by Richard S. Wright, Jr.

A Fresh Look
THE NIGHT SKY OBSERVER'S GUIDE, Volume 4: The Glories of the Milky Way to -54°
George Robert Kepple
Willmann-Bell, 2018
497 pages, ISBN 978-1-942675-06-8
$34.95, hardcover.
FOR THE LAST COUPLE OF DECADES,

most of my astronomical observations
have been made with a camera rather
than an eyepiece. Recently, I've been
making a concerted effort to return to
visual observing, and perhaps even take
it a bit more seriously than I had in the
past. Volume 4 of The Night Sky Observer's Guide, which bears the subtitle The
Glories of the Milky Way to -54°, has
been a wonderful resource on this journey. This book was my introduction to
the series, and I was so impressed by it
that I purchased the ﬁrst two volumes,
which cover the whole sky for Northern
Hemisphere observers, as well. (Volume
3 addresses the southern skies.)
Volume 4 easily stands on its own,
apart from the rest of the series. There's
some overlap with the content of previous volumes in the objects covered,
but here the author, George Robert
Kepple, focuses more intently on the
Milky Way region. He's added more
than 1,000 new objects not previously
covered, including E. E. Barnard's entire
Catalogue of Dark Markings of the Sky, a
great many planetary nebulae, the van
den Berg reﬂection nebulae, and Beverly
Lynds' Catalogue of Dark Nebulae. More
than 800 objects listed in the earlier
volumes were also updated with new
notes and/or photographs.
I found the ﬁrst chapter to be a satisfying refresher and primer on visual
observing basics. It covers the characteristics and nature of the different kinds
of astronomical targets, conventions for
making observing logs, and some advice
on record keeping, sketching, eyepiece
usage, and so on. This book is an excel-

lent place to start for any
beginning observer, and
the Milky Way is a buffet
of delicious objects for
telescopes of all sizes as
well as for binoculars.
Advanced observers
will also appreciate the
remainder of this book,
and, in fact, it would
be a mistake to think it
isn't useful for imagers.
Each chapter focuses on
a speciﬁc constellation with annotated
charts, photographs, or sketches of
each object. The observing notes are
rich, not tedious, and frequently show
how the target will look through different instruments: 8×50 binoculars,
8- to 10-inch scopes at 100×, or 12- to
14-inch scopes at 125×, for example.
When appropriate, Kepple also describes
the effects of using a UHC, O III, or
H-Beta visual ﬁlter. In addition to
"faint fuzzies," a plethora of interesting
star clusters (977 in total) that should

be accessible even with
modest optics at moderately light-polluted locations are included in the
target list.
I've seen my share
of observing guides for
which the images were
reaped from an old set
of photographic plates,
typically with large areas
completely blown out or
saturated. As an imager,
I was pleased with the high-quality
photographs and sketches provided for
all of the discussed objects. In fact, just
leaﬁng through the book, I've discovered many dozens of new targets that
I want to photograph . . . I mean . . .
observe with my Dobsonian.

¢ RICHARD S. WRIGHT, JR. is a senior
software engineer and imaging evangelist for Software Bisque. Occasionally,
though, when no one's looking, he will
peek through a neighbor's eyepiece.

sk yandtele scope.com * D EC E M B E R 2 019

57
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Sky & Telescope - December 2019

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