Cambridge University Press: Discover the Moon

4.0 Getting your lunar feet wet (Discover The Moon)

Easy-to-navigate intro to viewing interesting features. Unique two-photo orientation. Entertaining read.

Diagrams untranslated. Slight French cultural bias in text. A few mediocre photos.

The authors take a day-by-day approach to introducing the beginning observer to the various lunar sights, taking care not to overwhelm by dividing the observations into easy to digest tours. (photo-based)Maps and photographs are printed twice oriented for refractors/SCTs (including 90° star diagonals) and Newtonian reflectors respectively.

The authors point out interesting features and their origins as well as notes and historical information. Craters, rilles, domes are all featured. None are too difficult to observe with a small telescope when viewing and lighting is optimum.

The book's few faults mostly lie with translation from the original French. Explanatory diagrams at the beginning of the book have their labeling in French (Not a problem for me but I understand French). A few anecdotes might be lost on an American audience, such as the mention of the crater Hipparchus in the Tintin comic book "Explorers on the Moon".

Another fault lies with the uneven quality of the photographs featured (something that hearkens back to the Hatfield atlas). Most of the images are crisp and resolved, while a fair number of others are soft and fuzzy. Perhaps this was intentional, since this can reflect seeing, as well as not getting the small scope owner's expectation too high. As a user of 8" and smaller scopes, I didn't feel that the better images were unrealistic, so why include fuzzy ones? But it's a small nitpick overall.

This is a good book even for experienced observers who might have been away from lunar observing for awhile. Recommended.