Stars and Planets (Smithsonian Handbooks)

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Martyn Hamer

An introduction to planets, constellations, comets, meteors, and other objects that can be seen in the sky at night, with suggestions for nocturnal observers.

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Dennis B. Fradin

Presents basic information about the stars, constellations, galaxies, universe, solar system, and the earth. Also discusses famous astronomers and space travel.

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Storm Dunlop and Wil Tirion

Fully updated to 2017, this is the ideal guide for beginning sky watchers. With monthly charts and other diagrams, it shows how the visible stars change from month to month and includes the many sky events that occur throughout they year. Includes sky activity charts and moon calendars; meteors (with dates of showers, including hourly rate of radiants); the planets; ecliptic charts; diagrams of interesting events; plus sky and constellation maps throughout.

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Geoffrey S. Watson

Watson's book is a milestone in the literature on spherical distributions. For the specialist it brings together many results and points to paths for new research directions. For the statistician who is new to the subject, it is an excellent introduction to much of what is important in the field. One of the exciting things about the area of orientation statistics is that there are still many areas where we scarcely have an inkling of what to do. Appropriate models would find immediate application in geophysics. In fact, given practically any problem area in "flat" statistics—robustness, clustering, modelling, influential observations, to name a few—there is a corresponding problem for spheres. Progress is being made, but there is much to be done. And, of course, when statistics on the sphere are as familiar as N(0, 1), there are worlds of more complicated curved manifolds to conquer.