Usually the amateur astronomer begins the study of the heavens with wonderment at the beauties to be seen with the naked eye on a clear, moonless night away from the illumination of a city. The starclouds of the Milky Way and easy-to-recognize constellations draw attention: the Big Dipper or Great Bear, visible all year in the north for northern hemisphere observers, the brilliant winter constellation of Orion, or in the southern hemisphere, the Southern Cross. Then an observer is attracted to other celestial objects of smaller apparent size, visible to the unaided eye: the Moon and the bright planets; the Pleiades, the star-cluster in the constellation Taurus, known as the Seven Sisters; the fuzzy patch known as the Great Nebula in Orion; and another misty patch in the constellation Andromeda. This latter has come to be known in this century as the most distant object the unaided human eye can see – the Andromeda Galaxy at a distance of 2.2 million light-years.

By this time, if not before, most amateurs are eager to have optical aids, binoculars or telescopes, perhaps cameras, and they need information on the materials they should acquire and how to use them. Jack Newton and Philip Teece in The Guide to Amateur Astronomy have provided exactly the information that large numbers of amateurs are scurrying around to obtain.