An Intimate Look at the Night Sky - Hardcover

Raymo, Chet

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0802713696 ISBN 13: 9780802713698

Publisher: Walker Books, 2001

Synopsis

On one level, An Intimate Look at the Night Sky is a unique star guide: twenty-four beautiful star maps, created specifically for this book, cycle through the seasons and across the heavens, revealing what you can see with the naked eye throughout the year on a clear night in the northern hemisphere. Raymo's commentaries amplify the maps, offering intriguing details and tips on identifying stars, planets, and constellations.

On another level, Chet Raymo challenges our imagination―to see what is unseeable in the universe, to perceive distance and size and shape that is inconceivable, to appreciate ever more fully our extraordinary place in the cosmos. His elegant essays on the heavens blend science and history, mythology and religion, making clear why he is one of the most insightful and passionate science writers of our time.

About this title

About the Author

For nearly forty years, Chet Raymo has been exploring the relationship between science, nature, and the humanities as a professor, writer, illustrator and naturalist. In The Path: A One-Mile Walk Through the Universe, he uses the one-mile path he has walked to work for the past four decades as a means of discovering the extraordinary in everyday life.

A professor emeritus of astronomy and physics at Stonehill College in North Easton, Massachusetts, Raymo is the noted author of more than eight books on science, including the highly-praised An Intimate Look at the Night Sky, 365 Starry Nights, The Soul of the Night, Honey from Stone, and Skeptics and True Believers. In 1998, he won a prestigious Lannan Literary Award for the body of his non-fiction work. Raymo is also the author of two novels, In the Falcon's Claw (1990) and The Dork of Cork (1993), which has been sold in twelve languages.

Since 1985, he has written "Science Musings" for the Boston Globe , a weekly science and nature column reflecting upon the human side of science. He is also a frequent contributor to popular science and nature publications.

Chet Raymo and his wife Maureen live in North Easton, Massachusetts.

Reviews

"[W]hat kind of intimacy can one have with a universe of 100 billion galaxies, each galaxy containing one trillion stars...?" asks astronomer and Boston Globe science columnist Raymo (365 Starry Nights, etc.). He offers two answers. "First,... bring to mind the Big Bang, the out-rushing snowstorm of galaxies, the seething stars, the whirling planets, everything revealed by the telescopes... We carry a universe in our heads. It doesn't get much more intimate than that." Second, the discovery of that vast universe is "a story of human curiosity, human ingenuity, human courage." Arranged in 12 chapters corresponding to the months of the year, this book opens by transporting readers, eyes closed with Haydn's The Creation oratorio playing in the background, to one of those increasingly rare spots where artificial lighting does not pollute the pure darkness. When a choral whisper followed by a fortissimo C-major chord announces, "And there was light," Raymo advises readers to open their eyes to "Stars. Planets. The luminous river of the Milky Way.... [Y]ou will feel that you have been witness to the Big Bang." Each chapter illuminates a different scientific theme and ends with two star maps, one describing "What to See" and the other "What to Imagine" in the month's night sky. The book closes with a revelation. "Science illuminates nature but does not deplete its mystery. Science at its best... is an almost religious activity." By those criteria, and by any other, this is science at its best. Illus. (May)Forecast: This is the astronomy book for literate newcomers to the art of star-gazing. Display and handselling should help it move out of the stores. It's also an Astronomy Book Club main selection.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

"We are animals who evolved in a world without artificial light. Our brains were sculpted as much by darkness as by light." Yet today, because there is so much artificial light, many people see little of the stars. Raymo, who teaches astronomy at Stonehill College, seeks to show them what they are missing. He provides star maps for each of the seasons and many spectacular photographs of the night sky. The accompanying text lucidly presents the astronomy: how the stars got there, how they burn and how they die. "This book has as its purpose," Raymo writes, "the reestablishment of intimacy with the night."

EDITORS OF SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN

Raymo (Skeptics and True Believers: The Exhilarating Connection Between Science and Religion, LJ 6/1/98), a physics professor at Stonehill College, fears that we have lost our ancestral connection with the night sky indeed, that we no longer even see it. In this rambling, highly personal work, Raymo touches on some predictable topics eclipses, comets, the Big Bang but also discusses music, mythology, light pollution, nuclear weapons, and more. His meandering notwithstanding, the author's evident love and appreciation of the beauty, mystery, and wonder of the heavens will inspire some readers to step outside for a look at the stars. Novice sky-watchers can make good use of this book's resources: a series of seasonal star maps highlighting objects visible to the naked eye, appendixes about planets and meteor showers, and a (too-brief) list of print and electronic astronomy resources. Recommended for public libraries. (Index not seen.) Nancy R. Curtis, Univ. of Maine Lib, Orono
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Urbanites dismayed that all they see in the nocturnal dome is the few stars that somehow glimmer through the glow of city lights will have their latent curiosity about what could be seen well sated by Raymo's engaging, attractive effort. Not a field guide, the book instead diffuses Raymo's sensibility as he gazes skyward. So here are dilations on Haydn's Creation and van Gogh's Starry Night and the exalted feelings they evoke as one associates while gazing upward. Here are exhortations to imagine what is, even in an unlit, unclouded night sky, invisible to the naked eye, such as a black hole at the center of the Milky Way, the supernova Tycho saw, clusters of stars and galaxies, and more. Intending to engender a feeling of closeness with the universe, Raymo infuses his own sense of connectedness to the heavens into his summaries of the planets, the comets, and the other stuff up there. A delightful, inspiring introduction to astronomy. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Walker Books
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0802713696
• ISBN 13: 9780802713698
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208