Now in its 9th edition, this introduction to the night sky for beginners has
been in print since 1987 and has earned some enthusiastic reviews. The Monthly Sky Guide (MSG) was originally the working title; we never found anything better.
In many ways MSG continues the tradition of 19th-century guidebooks such as R. A. Proctor’s Half Hours with the Stars. Each month opens with an all-sky chart for mid-evening by Wil Tirion, which is
followed by descriptions of the main objects on show and detailed charts of
particular constellations of interest. The book is intended for
northern-hemisphere users only.
Information on the visibility of the naked-eye planets for a five-year period is
included in each edition; eclipses were added in the fourth edition (along with
any transits that may occur). This time-dependent information introduces a
degree of obsolescence into the book, although the bulk of the text refers to
objects visible each year and so does not date. Full-colour printing was
introduced with the 6th edition in 2003; previous editions had been printed in
two colours only. The maps have been subtly improved with each edition since.
The eighth edition, published in autumn 2009, saw the first major change in
content since the book first appeared. New sections were added on observing the
Moon and the planets, including four pages of realistic Moon maps based on US
Geological Survey originals. This expanded the length of the book from 64 to 72
pages, although the price remained the same.
The planetary and eclipse information in MSG9, published at the start of 2013, covers 2013–2017. The book is printed from layouts supplied by me in Quark XPress. The same
printing is sold in the UK, US, and Canada. Danish and Greek translations are
currently in print, although with different edition numbers. A French-language
edition is published under the title l’Observation du ciel; this was expanded to 112 pages for the 3rd edition (2011). There is also a
Polish edition, Miesięczny przewodnik po niebie, first published in 2014.
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