Rey's book is superb; I wish that I had seen it as child. The book illustrates the arbitrariness of traditional constellation stories, and, further, that many stories are consistent with the stars that we happen to see from Earth. There's some material in Beautiful Evidence about star-myths.

-- Edward Tufte, August 26, 2003

Ditto. I've got an old dog-eared broken-splined paperback edition that must be one of the most read volumes in my library; I need to get a new edition with updated planetary tables. It's the best intro to looking at the sky I know of; I also found this book later in life and wish I had been introduced to it earlier. It has some excellent treatments on more advanced concepts too: precession and solar and sidereal days and the like.

While on the subject, Will Tirion's Cambridge Star Atlas is a superb set of sky charts using a strikingly handsome visual language. A beautiful, if much more advanced, companion to Rey's introductory work.

-- Steve Sprague (email), August 26, 2003

A lost opportunity ... Time: September 1, 2003 page 57. The article is titled "Closs Encounter with Mars" and the graphic shows why Mars and Earth are closer than they have been in 60,000 years. The graphic shows a circular-orbiting Mars with a circular-orbiting Earth inside the Mars orbit ... the Earth-orbit is slightly off center, so the graphic shows how the two planets on the circles are closer than they have been in those 60,000 years.

However, the explanation of the graphic includes the disclaimer: "Mars' orbin (not drawn to scale) is elliptical and off-center in relation to the sun." Why not draw it to scale and make it elliptical!

Michael Round

-- Michael Round (email), August 27, 2003

A true classic which can be enjoyed on many levels by a broad range of age groups. It reveals Rey as a genious of graphicacy.

Stephen Calder

-- Stephen Calder (email), October 5, 2003

Could a Kindly Contributor put together a visual essay on Rey's book, combining a few page images with comments? We can all talk about the work here but it would be helpful to see something.

I remember Rey fitting various lines to the same group of stars, indicating that multiple star-myths are consistent with the same visual evidence, and therefore suggesting the early limits of star-myths. Constellation linkages are of course profoundly stuck in flatland even though stars are scattered in 3-space. Today there is considerable knowledge of star distances, so how about 3-dimensional star-stories? Or none at all?

For example, a 3-dimensional feature of large groups of galaxies is the recently discovered "Great Wall" (actually several), a blander but more descriptive account of structure than earlier earth-bound fantasies forced upon indifferent stars. After all, Newton's great insight is the universal indifference of Nature and Nature's laws to people like us. Perhaps our astronomical metaphors should reflect this most fundamental insight.

-- Edward Tufte, January 19, 2004

I have never seen H. A. Rey's book The Stars: A New Way to See Them? However I am interested in the subject.

I made this awhile ago, and this seemed like an opportunity to dust it off. >>> The closest stars

Hold the mouse down and spin the representation left and right.

This model shows stars with lines to Earth. It can easily be changed. If anyone has a Cartesian set for a favorite constellation or grouping of interest, I would be more than happy to represent them in 3d.

-- Jeffrey Berg (email), January 20, 2004

If you can see stereograms (Magic Eye), visit Akira Inaka's 3-D Space World to see some pretty spectacular versions of H.A. Rey's "shapes in the sky" in 3D.

Escape from flatland!

Here's Inaka's website - http://pro.tok2.com/~aq6a-ink/mac/usafr.htm

More about Inaka -

http://observers.org/tac.mailing.list/2003/Nov/0084.html

-- Jean OSullivan (email), January 20, 2004

After learning of this book last week, I went to my local bookseller downtown to order it. To my delight, she had a copy prominently displayed and I was able to enjoy it that evening. I had just never noticed it. It is a beautiful little book, and the paperback was just $11.95. Didn't think to ask about clothbound, but I will.

Steven Byers

-- Steven Byers (email), January 26, 2004

Interesting. I first encountered Rey's book as a teen-aged astronomy geek. I recall vividly that I did not care for it. I wish that hadn't been the case.

The reason for my negative reaction was that I had already assimilated an alternative solution to the problem of seeing constellations. During a planetarium show, either at Griffith Park in LA or at the Cleveland natural history museum, a guide made the claim that it was better to think of constellations as regions rather than as connect-the-dot pictures. As regions, he said, constellations are like states on a map. And here was the closer: no one expects the state of Washington to look like George Washington on the map. With that logic embedded in my skull, Rey seemed like a regression.

(In what I think is a similar manifestation of personal psychology, I have always thought of a game of chess as a series of abstract problems, even as a child. I have been surprised to learn, over the years, how many of my smartest friends did and continue to think of chess as battles with castles, knights, bishops, and a king!)

I have to wonder how many of the stars in Rey's pictures are visible in the average urban or suburban night sky today! Hard to connect a picture if many of the dots disappear due to light pollution.

-- Mark Hineline (email), January 26, 2004

Guy Ottewell has done beautiful illustrations that convey the scale of celestial geometries, printed large on 11 x 15 inch pages. His yearly "Astronomical Calendar" features diagrams of the motions of various planetary and interplanetary bodies. "The Astronomical Companion" contains beautiful astronomical illustrations and charts accompanied by clear explanations of the basics of astronomy.

He has also done a 13 x 18 inch poster, "Portrait of a Million," featuring one million dots.

Few examples of his work are available online. However, his large-format illustrations are best seen on paper anyway.

Links to his work and ordering information:

http://www.noao.edu/education/peppercorn/Ottewell.html

http://www.astromax.com/go-astro.htm

-- Andrew Ivester (email), January 28, 2004

I bought the book as a teen and have enjoyed many a night finding the constellations. It is a popular book and many bookstores keep it in stock. He provides numerous sky charts for both hemispheres that match the sky throughout the year that greatly simplifies orienting yourself to the sky. Amazon has excerpts from this book and his other book, "Find the Constellations". You can scroll through a few excerpt pages and see a few other examples of his stick man figures. They make it very easy to identify the constellations. I recommend "The Stars.." to anyone who likes looking at the night sky.

-- Patrick (email), September 16, 2007

I learned the sky from this book when I was a young child. It inspired me to look up, and wonder.

I have worked in a planetarium now for ten years, following this inspiration. I get to show others what I've found, and point out what is in the sky.

I recommend this book, which is in our Museum store, to anyone who asks about any sky book. For both the young and old, Rey did a fantastic job to outline the stars and make them look alive.

-- Aargyle (email), January 29, 2008

I came across this book in my young twenties at the gift shop in Yosemite National Park. As a child and teenager, I had always longed for a means of visualizing the constellations that made sense to me; most other star charts had failed by being too abstract. Rey's "new" approach (which may not be so new) made immediate sense to me, and the night sky unfolded like a map. Suddenly, the constellations, which are mnemonic devices anyway, were easy to learn, and their structure and stories felt like common sense. Because of Rey's book, I now know my way around the night sky, and I enjoy imparting my love of the stars and Astronomy to my children. It has enriched all my other studies of the stars.

-- A, J. (email), November 16, 2008