THE 88 CONSTELLATIONS - Greek Myth and Arabic Star Names: A guide to the figures in the sky, the stories the Greeks told about them, and the names the Arab astronomers gave their stars (Astronomy)

A thoughtful Christmas gift for stargazers, mythology lovers, and anyone curious about the stories behind the night sky.

Look up on a clear night and you are reading two languages at once.

The figures are Greek. Orion the hunter, Cassiopeia chained to her throne, the bear that Zeus placed among the stars to hide her from a jealous wife. But the individual stars mostly answer to Arabic. Betelgeuse, Aldebaran, Altair, Rigel, Deneb, Fomalhaut — these names crossed from Baghdad into Latin Europe in the twelfth century, were copied by scribes who did not speak the language, and arrived slightly broken.

Betelgeuse is the best example. It should mean the hand of al-Jawzāʾ, but a copyist misread a single Arabic letter, one dot in the wrong place, and Europe spent four hundred years inventing explanations for the mistake.

This book gives you all 88 constellations, one at a time.

For each you get its name and what it means, a finder panel with right ascension and declination, the months it is best seen, the latitudes it is visible from, and which constellations sit beside it. Then the Greek myth, retold in full. Then the star names, traced back to their roots — Arabic mostly, but also Greek, Latin, Persian, Sumerian, Sanskrit and Chinese — with 429 of them decoded across the book.

Inside:

• All 88 constellations, with a star chart of every figure
• Three full sky maps: the whole sky, the northern heavens, the southern heavens
• 429 star names traced to their origins and meanings
• The great myth cycles explained: Perseus, Heracles, Orion, the Argonauts
• Zeus in the sky, and why so many constellations are his doing
• How the Arabic names reached Europe, and how they got mangled on the way

No telescope needed, and no prior knowledge assumed. Read it in an armchair or take it outside.