Atlas of the Moon (Review)

Atlas of the Moon (Review)

he what, you ask?

Well, there’s my astronomy interest, bleeding over.

Picked this up from the lending library at the Central Florida Astronomical Society (just how many clubs am I a member of?). While mostly the book is made up of plates showing beautifully clear drawings of a section of the Moon (including a side description of all the craters located there), what I really found most interesting were the descriptions of the Moon. Where it might have come from (at least back in 2004 – everything changes so fast). How it orbits. While this section isn’t all that long, it was big-time interesting to me. See, I love looking at the moon and could never understand why it takes almost a month for the shadow to work across its stony surface. After all, if it comes up in the East and its eastern face is shaded, shouldn’t the western face be shaded when it’s sinking to the West hours later? I could never quite get my head around this until I read a chapter specifically dealing with this (actually, I keep flickering back to my old way of imagining it, then forcing myself into my new worldview (er, moonview)).

So yes, no glorious writing and twisting plots but rather a good solid piece describing this body that fills our skies and caused so many myths and misunderstandings (oceans on the moon? Really?).

In a perfect world, I’d have this thing on a music stand with a red light illuminating it while I study my favorite sky-friend, but we’ve had nothing but clouds and haze for a month and the book’s due back. But for you star-folks, worth a look.

>>>I’M SURE THE MOON APPEARS IN MY BOOKS, PROBABLY AS A BACKGROUND DEVICE, LIGHTING UP NIGHT SCENES THAT NEED IT. YOU TELL ME. MY BOOKS ARE ON SALE HERE!<<<