THE STARGAZER'S GUIDE
The Stargazer’s Guide
Emily Winterburn
UK & Commonwealth rights: Constable & Robinson
US rights: HarperCollins
Dutch rights: Balans
German rights: DTV
Japanese rights: Japan Uni Agency
All other rights available
The night sky is full of stories. There are those passed on to us by the Ancient Greeks, others by some of the first Islamic astronomers; stories from 17th century explorers as well as those being constantly updated by modern astronomers. Stargazing and its more scientific sister activity, astronomy, like any science has never been just about cutting edge research and the making of new discoveries. For a long time, astrology and its popular public reception kept alive interest in astronomy which might otherwise, in the West at least, have lulled. Later, astronomy lectures, books and games became popular as a form of ‘rational recreation’: it was at one time the height of fashion to spend one's evenings learning the names and stories associated with the stars and constellations and spotting them in our night’s sky. This is a tradition which this book intends to revive.
Whether it's spotting stars with your toddler on your way home from nursery or standing with friends in your back garden waiting for Orion to slowly rise above the horizon at a tea and stars party, stargazing can be an entertaining activity. It can also be enormously informative in telling us where, as part of a world culture, we come from. In every name and every story in the sky there is evidence of cultures working together, passing on and building on each others' knowledge in an attempt to understand the world around us. Some have been straight forward stories, others an attempt to predict future events and control our environment. Chapter by chapter, the reader is taken through the various stories - mythological, historical and scientific - associated with the night sky in each month and provided with simple diagrams which will enable them to identify the constellations for themselves. Particular care will be taken to make the book applicable to both the Northern and Southern hemisphere by taking a 'slice' of the sky for each month.
As the curator of Astronomy at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, Emily Winterburn was responsible for one of the world’s most important astronomy collections. She has written for BBC History and Astronomy Now magazines and has appeared on the BBC’s What the Ancients Did for Us, Channel 4 News and In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg. She lives in Yorkshire with her husband and two children and works at the Leeds University History of Science department.
