(Part 2) Top products from r/askastronomy

You can get some good views of the gas giants. Assuming you are in the continental U.S., Saturn should be viewable shortly after sunset and Jupiter should be viewable shortly before sunrise. Saturn would probably look better than Jupiter with your binoculars.

You should also be able to see Andromeda's galaxy around this time of the year. I can't say for certain how much detail you can get out of it but with good light conditions, I'd be willing to bet you'd be able to see the disk.

Star clusters are where binoculars really shine (sometimes even providing better views than telescopes), you might want to take a look at the list of Messier objects to find some good star clusters to look at. Make sure that you take a look at the Seven Sisters this fall, it is definitely my favorite star cluster.

If you are new, you should really invest in a good planisphere such as this one. Just make sure to get one for your correct latitude. You should also get some sort of red light, whether a red LED flashlight, a regular light with a filter, or just a flash light you have lying around with some red cellophane or brake light repair tape on it. There are even books specifically for binocular astronomy that might be a good investment.

Most importantly, have fun and clear skies!

I also got my first telescope when I was 11. The best thing to do to get into the hobby is going to your local amateur astronomers group and start observing with them. They will know what object you can see, and you will learn a lot from their experience. I started like that and a few years later build my own telescope (with the help of one of the members of the astronomers group).

I would also recommend not to use the "go-to" function on the telescope if it has one, so that you learn to know the sky and to search by yourself (it's a really good feeling when you finally find the object you're looking for).

A really great book I use almost every time I get my telescope out is the Observer's Sky Atlas written by Erich Karkoschka (http://www.amazon.com/Observers-Sky-Atlas-Charts-Covering/dp/0387485376/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1418284218&sr=8-1&keywords=the+observer%27s+sky+atlas)

In his promos for Space Chronicles, Tyson likes to call space enthusiasts delusional. I agree with him that Apollo was a cold war fluke.

But his approach is nothing new either. Space enthusiasts have been arguing investing in space exploration boosts STEM and the economy. For decades. Has Neil's 2012 book changed the minds of policy makers? I don't see any indication Hillary, Bernie or Trump has taken any interest in Tyson's arguments.

In short, Tyson is just as delusional as the rest of us space enthusiasts. We'll be lucky if NASA continues getting 15 to 20 billion per year.

The only possibility I see for a change in paradigm is commercial space making money. If space resources give a return on investment, our expansion into space will follow naturally.

Here are a few books on possible space resources/settlement:

Mining The Sky by Dr. John S. Lewis

Asteroid Mining 101 by Dr. John S. Lewis

Rain of Iron and Ice by Dr. John S. Lewis

Dr. Lewis was a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona. Rain of Iron and Ice is about possible meteorite impacts. The other two books explore the possibility of mining asteroids.

Moon Rush by Dennis Wingo

Wingo advocates mining the moon for platinum and rare earth metals. A very long shot, in my opinion. However the first chapters describe how government-private partnerships built U.S. transportation and communication infrastructure. I believe Wingo is correct that it'd take such a partnership to establish infrastructure in the earth moon neighborhood.

The Value of The Moon by Paul Spudis
Spudis believes there are rich water ice and other volatile deposits in the lunar cold traps. These crater floors that haven't felt sunlight in eons are as cold as 30 K. These pits of eternal night neighbor plateaus of eternal light. The polar plateaus receive nearly constant sunlight and thus don't suffer the two week days and two week nights of lower lunar latitudes. Temperature swings are much milder.

Spudis advocates mining lunar water and exporting lunar propellent throughout the earth moon neighborhood.

The Cosmic Perspective is a pretty good introductory text for astronomy.

The most comprehensive text in astrophysics is An Introduction to Modern Astrophysics by Carroll and Ostlie (often referred to as the "big orange book," or BOB for short). This text is much more mathematically involved, but will teach you most anything you might want to know about astrophysics.

If you really want to understand astronomy, then BOB is the way to go, but you'll have to learn calculus and a couple of years of physics to understand some of the concepts. I would suggest starting with The Cosmic Perspective and learning some physics and math if you become interested enough to move on to BOB.

Also not a teacher, though I just wanted to point out that the widely-used textbook for first year astronomy 'science for non-science majors' courses, The Cosmic Perspective, while pricey, is a great resource on which to base a two semester course. It has more in it than you'll need, so you can pick and choose chapters to expand into classroom content. It's almost entirely word-based to keep math out of it, so you can set the math level to whatever grade you're teaching. It covers human endeavours to observe the universe from ancient times onward, and astronomy from the Solar System to the edge of the observable universe.

I know someone who taught astronomy as a single unit in their grade 9 science class. Though not a full course in itself, if it would help I can ask if they still have their lesson plans and notes for the unit.

This really depends on what you want to learn. I'll throw out some of my favorites.


Coming of Age In The Milky Way

Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure The Heavens

Of course there's Carl Sagan's Cosmos which is a bit outdated, but still a fantastic read. I'd personally recommend any of Sagans books. Demon Haunted World (about science and skepticism), Pale Blue Dot (spiritual sequel to Cosmos)

Death by Black Hole

Atom: A Single Oxygen Atom's Odyssey from the Big Bang to Life on Earth... and Beyond

Check out Practical Astronomy with your Calculator and see if that fits your needs. Fantastic book.

This book is really good, though it is very math intensive, which makes sense considering it's a textbook.

I like The Cosmos: Astronomy in the New Millenium by Pasachoff & Flippenko

New expensive edition: http://www.amazon.com/Cosmos-Astronomy-New-Millennium/dp/110768756X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408850672&sr=1-1

Previous cheap edition: http://www.amazon.com/Cosmos-Astronomy-Millennium-AceAstronomy-Virtual/dp/049501303X/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1408850672&sr=1-2

I recommend Astrophysics for People In a Hurry by Neil DeGrasse Tyson.

My undergrad text book

http://mentallandscape.com/V_Venus.htm

https://web.archive.org/web/20150929111636/http://files.seds.org/pub/info/newsletters/ejasa/1993/jasa9302.txt

https://www.amazon.com/Scientific-Exploration-Venus-Fredric-Taylor/dp/1107023483/

https://www.springer.com/us/book/9780387463438

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Astronomy-Dummies-Stephen-P-Maran/dp/1118376978

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Space-Exploration-Dummies-Cynthia-Phillips/dp/0470445734

I can only suggest those two.

I was always partial to Astronomy Today. You can find older editions for significantly cheaper, although you'll get outdated information about Pluto and exoplanet discoveries.

The Georgian Star by Michael Lemonick. Although it focuses on the lives of William and Caroline Herschel, it is an interesting and easily digestible story of a particular time in the history of astronomy.

[Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology] (http://www.amazon.com/Cosmos-Illustrated-History-Astronomy-Cosmology/dp/0226594416/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1452133510&sr=8-1&keywords=cosmology+john+north) by John North. I bought this on a whim. It is very informative, but parts of the text have overwhelmed me because of my ignorance of subjects such as trigonometry and calculus.