Astronomy Hacks Book Review

O’Reilly is not known for being specialists in publishing astronomy books, so it is nice to see an astronomy book from them. O’Reilly are already well known for their hacks series of books on a number of subjects and this book contains 65 astronomy hacks covering everything you need to know in order to make the most out of your nights observing.

The 65 astronomy hacks are divided into four chapters. These are Getting Started, Observing Hacks, Scope Hacks and Accessory Hacks.

There are lots of tips and advice in this book, such as what to pack for nights observing, how to protect your night vision, how to learn urban observing, how to upgrade your Dobsian mount.

There are also other tips on how to align your viewfinder, how to maintain logbooks, how to clean your eyepieces and how to tune your Newtonian reflector for maximum performance.

Astronomy Hacks contains a number of images and diagrams and is a great read, also a useful reference. It’s nice to be able to read just one hack at once, which is shorter than a normal book chapter.

Astronomy Hacks is available at Waterstones