This is the third Stephen James O’Meara book in the Deep-Sky Companion series and it is the biggest and heaviest!
I had this one on pre-order with Amazon for over a year. Twice the publication date was put back it seems – but the wait was well worth it. It now sits proudly on my astronomy bookshelf.
With 584 high-quality pages you need to pick up this tome with both hands. Again we have an Index (thank you Stephen) that was surprisingly absent in “The Messier Objects” and made its first appearance in “The Caldwell Objects”. It is a similar format to the other two books with a nice Black and White image and a sketch of the object as seen by O’Meara through a small refractor.
This time there is an addition! We also get a small star map of the region the object is located in for reference – a very useful and a very welcome addition. Also, once again, the highly informative prose accompanies each object, and I really like the way O’Meara writes, so for me it adds a great deal to the enjoyment of the book.
A number of well-known and expected entries such as the Pac Man nebula, Kemble’s Cascade, and the Flame nebula – but a much larger number of nebulae, star clusters planetary nebulae and galaxies that I’d not heard of before.
None of the 109 “Hidden Treasures” are included in the Messier or Caldwell catalogues of course! As a deep-sky imager this book has provided me with dozens of new exciting targets.
You simply must buy this book to complete the trilogy. You can purchase this book from Amazon or any other good book dealer.
