Stikky Night Skies: Learn 6 constellations, 4 stars, a planet, a galaxy, and how to navigate at night-in one hour, guaranteed.

Stikky #: 1
List price: US $12
Edition: Softcover, lay-flat binding, 256 pages
Dimensions: 7 inches x 9 inches
First printing: February 2003
ISBN: 1-932974-01-6

Read this book if you want to...

Stikky Night Skies uses a unique learning method to bring a fascinating topic to anyone with an hour to spare. We spent hundreds of hours with dozens of readers testing and refining it to be sure it will work for you.

Includes a comprehensive Next Steps section with guides to the top 12 night sky objects, stargazing equipment, observatories, clubs, free star maps, space and astronomy websites, and more.

For stargazers in the northern hemisphere.

What this book is about

Stikky Night Skies uses a unique learning method to introduce anyone who is interested to the stars of the night sky, step-by-step.

Each step builds on what came before and reinforces it. That way, by the time you reach the end of the book, you will be confident in finding your way around much of the sky.

Still more exciting, what you learn will serve as 'hooks' that you can hang future learning on.

The book also teaches you how to find which direction is north by reading the stars, so you will be able to navigate at night without a compass.

Stikky Night Skies has four parts:

Sequence One introduces the constellation Orion and its famous star Betelgeuse, constellations Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper, and tells you where to look for planets in the sky. It also teaches you how to find the star Polaris and use it to figure out which way is north. You should read this sequence in one sitting if possible.

Sequence Two builds on what you have learned in Sequence One, adding constellations Cygnus, Taurus and the Pleiades, stars Sirius and Vega, and the Milky Way galaxy. Ideally, you should leave a few days, but no more than a week, between completing Sequence One and reading Sequence Two.

The Epilogue, a special feature of Stikky books, brings together everything you have learned and reinforces it in some new and unfamiliar situations. Again, you should leave a few days between completing Sequence Two and reading the Epilogue.

If, by the end of the book, you are hungry to find out more, as we hope you will be, you will find dozens of things to explore in the Next Steps section.

You can skip to the Next Steps section at any time, of course, but the rest of the book only makes sense if read in order: Sequence One, Sequence Two, Epilogue.

Reviews

“Don't expect an ordinary book.” —Washington Post

“As entertaining as it is effective.” —PBS

“A very nice conception, especially the way it provides a multi-directional framework for future learning. Most of all Night Skies nurtures that essential ingredient that, unfortunately, most educational efforts suppress: curiosity.”
—JOHN HOLLAND, author of Emergence: From Chaos to Order and Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan

“A quick and easy way to learn.”
—REG WEAVER, President of the National Education Association

“Innovative and irresistible…this book is addictive.”
—RICHARD ELLIS, reviewing editor of Science and Steele Professor of Astronomy at Caltech

“A hefty selection of print and web resources”
—JOHN PETERS, New York Public Library.

“Anyone can learn the constellations with this book's pattern recognition approach and a dark sky.”
—DAVID WILNER, Harvard-Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory and NASA Fellow.

“After only a brief read of Stikky Night Skies, you feel compelled to run outside to test your new-found navigational skills. No sentient person should be without these basic tools for looking up. We owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to our ancestors, who first tried to make sense of the cosmos.”
—NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON, Astrophysicist and Director, Hayden Planetarium, New York City

“Now I can even find objects I observe in the sky rather than just on my computer.”
—ALYSSA GOODMAN, Professor of Astronomy at Harvard University

“A fascinating, clever and delightful book. I have taught contemporary astronomy and astrophysics for decades, and written a lot of books about these topics, but a lot more sticks in my mind after reading Stikky Night Skies.”
—KEN LANG, Professor of Astronomy at Tufts University, Fulbright Scholar, and author of
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Sun

“A very valuable introduction to the night sky for those who may never have thought they could recognize constellations or orient themselves to enjoy the splendors of our universe.”
—PAUL GOLDSMITH, Director of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, and James Weeks Professor at Cornell University