A Walk through the Heavens: A Guide to Stars and Constellations and their Legends, Edition 4

Milton D. Heifetz · Wil Tirion

Feb 2017 · Cambridge University Press

About this ebook

What is that star called? Where is the Great Bear? A Walk through the Heavens is a beautiful guide to the pathways in the night sky, and which answers these questions and more. Written for complete beginners, this book introduces the reader to the patterns of the northern hemisphere's sky in a clear and memorable way. Its simplified maps and clear instructions make it easy to find the main constellations and identify the bright stars within them. This fourth edition adds color and a map of the Moon to its successful formula. Ancient myths and legends of the sky, some thousands of years old, are retold to add to the wonder and mystery of the stars. No equipment is needed to use this practical guide, just the naked eye and clear dark skies above - simply look up, relax and enjoy this journey across the sky.

About the author

Milton D. Heifetz (1921–2015) was a leading neurosurgeon and inventor of the Heifetz aneurysm clip, the leading device of its kind during the 1970s and 1980s. Later on in his career, he became active in medical ethics, taking an early pro-euthanasia stance and writing several books on the topic. In this capacity, he was a visiting professor at Harvard University, Massachusetts, a visiting scholar at the University of Oxford and he taught a course in ethics at the Boston College Law School up until his eighties.

Wil Tirion is a full-time uranographer. He is famous among the amateur astronomy community for the numerous atlases and star charts he has created. Other successful books include Sky Atlas 2000.0 (with Roger W. Sinott, Cambridge, 1998), The Cambridge Star Atlas, 3rd edition (Cambridge, 2001), The Cambridge Double Star Atlas, 2nd edition (with Bruce MacEvoy, Cambridge, 2015), and The Monthly Sky Guide, 9th edition (with Ian Ridpath, Cambridge, 2013).