The Isaac Newton Telescope at Herstmonceux and on La Palma

Starlight: An introduction to Stellar Physics for Amateurs

The Heavens on Earth: Observatories and Astronomy in Nineteenth Century Science and Culture

Confessions of an Alien Hunter

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NEW! PATRICK MOORE BOOKS

Wayne Biddle, an American Pulitzer prize-winning reporter, has at last been able to penetrate the murky Nazi past of Dr Wernher von Braun, creator of the Saturn V rocket that enabled the United States to land the first men on the Moon in 1969. US intelligence gathered all the details of how closely he was involved with the ruthless use of slave-labour during the war years, but kept the information secret for half a century while they used his services.....

It must be difficult to write a book about the Apollo 11 mission. I'm sure that there is a book that covers every minute detail and I seem to have read quite a few of them, so when I received this book I was not convinced that I would find anything new....

In the fiftieth year of the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), Paul Davies’ book is a welcome wake-up call for the search for intelligent life elsewhere in the Universe. Davies, a professor at the BEYOND Center at the Arizona State University and a familiar name in popular science, has got to the nub of the SETI endeavour, highlighting the strengths and flaws of radio SETI (it is easy to do, but with marginally better than a cat in hell’s chance of finding anything) and exploring new frontiers where he believes we should be directing our search....

Fourteen of the world's leading astronomers and scientists have come together to produce what could be the most important of the many volumes America's space agency NASA has produced in the study of cosmic evolution following 50 years of human and scientific spaceflight. Many are deeply involved in SETI, the search for life on other worlds, and one of them, Howard Bloom, says evolution is shouting a message at us: get as many species as possible of fish, reptiles and mammals 'off this dangerous scrap of stone and find new niches for life' before the whole experiment of life dies in some perfectly normal cosmic catastrophe....

This book 'does what it says on the tin'. It consists of pictures of astronomers, mainly senior, well-known astronomers, mostly comprising head-and-shoulders shots, and with a heavy UK bias. If you are one of the lucky 38 illustrated, your relatives will no doubt be anxious to purchase a copy of this book....

Haynes are normally associated with their extensive range of car manuals but in recent times they have expanded into other fields, including space. But this book doesn’t go into great technical detail about how rockets and spacecraft work, and some of the information is patchy. What the book does have is hundreds of (mainly colour) photographs from the past fifty years of manned spaceflight, from Vostok to the ISS....

Conceding that the court is still out on pre-1600 allusions to far-seeing devices, this book quickly moves to the firmer ground of the seventeenth century invention, aware that prior optical experimentation had been rife for many years, including, we discover, work by Galileo himself. Almost immediately improvements to this new device were sought, by some measures very strange to today’s standards....

This delightful 13-minute film chronicling the naming of Pluto by Venetia Burney (now Venetia Burney Phair) in 1930 is a gentle telling of one of astronomy's memorable human stories...

On 26 July 1609, Thomas Harriot became the first person to make a drawing of an astronomical body with a telescope - over three months before Galileo. Harriot remained an obscure figure in scientific history for well over 200 years after his death in 1621 and it was not until the late twentieth century that he became of international scholarly recognition and study....

Dr Sergei Krushchev, son of former Soviet leader Nikita Kruschev, reveals in a long foreword that the launch of Sputnik 1, the world's first satellite, would have been taken for granted in the Soviet Union had it not created such sensational alarm in the United States...

With so many books covering Galileo’s astronomical feats, Dan Hofstadter’s unique book bridges a gap in our scientific and moral understanding of both man and the times. The prologue immediately sets the scene with the day Galileo was summoned to appear before the Roman Inquisition. The charge, simply to account for his published debates on an Earth-centred system of the Universe versus the Sun-centred system...

The ‘southwest’ in the title refers to the United States (California, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas). This area is home to some of the great observatories of the World, including the historical 200 inch Palomar reflector, the twenty-seven radio dishes of the Very Large Array and the truly gargantuan twin 8.4 metre mirrors that comprise the Large Binocular Telescope. The subtitle A Guide for Curious Skywatchers, indicates that the book is aimed primarily at astronomers (and also the interested layman) visiting the area....

This sumptuous book features the favourite images from all the Apollo Moon missions chosen by the astronauts themselves, with insightful commentary from many of them, revealing their range of personalities...

This is an engaging and accessible biography that not only describes the lives and work of William and Caroline Herschel, but also gives insights into the way they thought about astronomy, which was quite unique for their time...

This guide to observing meteor showers contains much useful information for a newcomer to meteor observing, especially with regards to practical advice relating to meteor watches. One third of the book covers the major showers; another third the lesser known showers, all with useful charts included to show the radiant locations and their daily motion...

The book begins with an introduction discussing the origin of the list and saying something about its creator. This is followed by 212 pages of text, maps and images describing the objects themselves. Two pages are devoted to each, with three pairings – the Rosette Nebula and the associated cluster NGC 2244, for example – being covered together. These pages provide notes on the objects, such as magnitude, location and size, in addition to guidance on the telescope aperture required, suggestions for star-hop starting points and potential CCD/DSLR imaging strategies....

Martin Mobberley's book is very attractive not only in explaining the technical detail of cataclysmic phenomena but also in the promotion of useful observing projects for amateurs to undertake...

This book is essentially an eclectic mix of short essays (one as short as 40 words!). Sir Patrick uses simple (sometimes oddball) engineered questions as a vehicle to deliver snippets of information on all aspects of his astronomical knowledge and personal encounters....

First impressions: if you want a digestible compendium of state-of-the-art Mars research, this is the book...

It is important for scientists to remember that science, just like any other human activity, generates myths about itself, and most especially, about its perceived historical origins. And one myth that is being actively promoted in some quarters today, and which only dates back to the late Victorian period, is that science had to somehow break free from the superstitious shackles of the Christian region before it could develop.....

If you already have a good knowledge of the Apollo 11 mission, then it's probably not essential that you read Moonshot. For everyone else there is plenty to enjoy in Dan Parry's book...

Unquestionably the Meade LXD series of telescopes and mounts have revolutionised GOTO systems, and Martin Peston can certainly call himself one of the world's leading experts on these mounts and their associated control. His book can best be described as a user manual on steroids, and quite probably something that anyone with an LXD mount should own as a reference...

I was rather incredulous of the subtitle of this book: Why We Have Already Found Extraterrestrial Life. Really? This was news to me. I had to read more!..

Predicting the future is always a gamble. With several of the previous incumbents of the White House stating the intent to return first to the Moon and then on to Mars, many would have hoped that the future would have happened by now. But rumblings of budget cut proposals make the prospects seem as distant as ever. With Erik Seedhouse’s book, the planning and requirements for such a complex and difficult mission are laid out for all to see....

With panache and humour the SETI Institute’s senior astronomer Dr Seth Shostak regales the reader with the life and times of a scientist whose day job is to look for aliens. Sporting a forward by SETI pioneer Frank Drake, Shostak’s book reveals what would really happen if we detected a signal from extraterrestrials, using the false alarm of 1997 (when signals from the newly-launched SOHO spacecraft were for a short time mistaken for the real thing) as an example.....

Carl Sagan was an amazing person; a tremendous scientist and the best populariser of science that has ever lived. He was a complex man, steeped in scientific rigour and yet possessing a great imagination, whose quest to explore the planets and search for life sometimes got in the way of his personal life, at least until he met his third wife, Ann Druyan....

This is not a book for beginners, but those with some grounding in stellar physics and also those who dislike equations can expect a delicious feast of mysteries and ways to solve them in store. I found it difficult, but incredibly rewarding, with some of the best 'Eureka!' moments I've yet experienced, especially in understanding dark matter.....

Meteorites - rocks from space that have fallen to the Earth - provide a unique insight into conditions present during the formation of the Solar System. They originate from asteroids, the Moon and Mars, and as a result can tell us a lot about how our local planetary neighbourhood has evolved....

One Small Step is a truly commemorative 'souvenir' of the first Apollo Moon landing, which celebrates its fortieth anniversary this July as part of the International Year of Astronomy...