Go-To Telescopes Under Suburban Skies

Book excerpt: Go-To Telescopes Under Suburban Skies is the first book specifically written for amateur astronomers who own, or who are about to purchase, a computer-controlled ‘go-to’ telescope. The advantage of the ‘go-to’ capability is enormous – the telescope can be aimed at any object in the sky with great speed and accuracy – which is why these instruments are so popular. Making the realistic assumption that the observer is using a relatively small telescope and is observing from a backyard in a suburban area, this book provides literally hundreds more targets beyond those offered by the built-in ‘nightly tours’ that feature on the telescope’s computer tours. And instead of wasting many pages on maps and coordinates, it leads the computer to locate the targets, and so has room to suggest many more fascinating deep-sky objects and provide detailed observing lists and information about what's being viewed.