Discover Planet Watch by Clint Hatchett

The book begins with a section on devising your own tools to study the planets. Those projects are highly illustrated and even the most basic requires skillful mastery of geometric and trigonometric tools. The activities although listed as basic, intermediate, and advanced were all advanced for me.

For the serious student of the night sky, the advice, charts, maps, details and usage of telescopes and proper charting of observable sky entities are invaluable. This book would be an excellent gift for someone who has decided to make his life's work in an observatory. It is on that level, as far as I am concerned. What seems to be holding this book back from being a solely scientific sourcebook and excellent workbooks is its falling back into the hands of astrologers. The over emphasis of Venus, the goddess of the night is really quaint.

However, one questions the need for a nude Venus in a workbook on telescopes and sky mapping.
A workbook on sky mapping that includes spectacular shots of the lunar landscape falls short of the work that knowing such scientific trades entailed when presented with a nude Venus. The book's premise is charting the night sky.
I, for one, don't think that I have ever looked up and saw Venus descending.

The book says, you never know what you will see in the night sky. I sincerely hope the writer didn't mean to imply a Roman goddess would appear. I apologize if I sound trite, but that is what the insertion of the last couple of chapters seemed to me to be, trite.

Discover Planet Watch is a highly technical book filled with astronomical charts and calculations and information of making yourself head of a planetarium if you spent about a year or more following each project whether done right or falsely.

Discover Planet Watch can make you sound knowledgeable about the skies if you read it and don't do any of its projects.

Discover Planet Watch can make you decide that you really don't care about Venus or placating the goddess of fire.