Night Sky Almanac 2025: A stargazer’s guide

With a beautiful cover, this is a gorgeously-illustrated hardback that fits into the hand (pretty much a regular-size book). Very information-dense, which allows you to watch the skies throughout the year. This subject interests my MIL (who lives next door!) as she's learning about astrology - astrology is tied to astronomy, of course.Not sure why one reviewer bemoans the lack of jokes (?) as this is an Almanac, as such there will be lots of information within. Maybe they thought they were ordering a different kind of book!For those interested in any sort of celestial events - meteor showers, moonphases, sunrise / sunset..my partner is into astronomy too and has sneaked a few looks to see what's coming up each month.Highly recommended if this is your fascination!

This is a lovely book and would make an excellent gift for somebody who is into astronomy, whether they're a casual observer or avid stargazer.You can get apps that do the same sort of thing as this book, but they're not as nice, nor as tactile. Not only does the book tell you about the astronomical events coming up this year, it also has some great information about positional astronomy. It clarifies terms and explains why you can see what you can see. It also has lists of dark sky sites across the globe - one day I'll make it to one.For me this at the moment this is just an aspirational guide, but it's books like this that will prod me into putting a warm jumper on and heading out to look at the heavens!

This book is smaller than I thought. I thought it would be bigger like an annual or coffee table book kind of size but it is not. It is small like a paperback. Of course it is a Hardback though and it has a slight ridged texture to it that makes it nicely tactile in my opinion.Inside the pages are small also of course as is the font. If you need glasses at all (or even sometimes) you will likely need them to read the small font in this book. The book is densely printed and densely packed with information. It is very textbook like, it's all learning and all non-fiction. I don't think there's a joke or an anecdote to be found in the whole tome.The book has around 270 readable pages from introduction to index. The first 40 or so pages are an information dump about the overall topic split into sections including sections on meteor showers, the Moon and constellations, amongst others. The main meat of the book, roughly from pages 50 to 235 are split into 12 chapters chronologically from January 2025 to December 2025. The final 35 pages or so are lists and graphs and the index I mentioned earlier.I've used the word "dense" before but I'm going to go ahead and use it one last time - the book is dense and information packed. There are graphs and diagrams, lists and pictures all printed in black and white. The book is extremely informative and information packed but because of this it is dry and arguably not very friendly to beginners or children. You may dispute this, and you may be right, but personally I have never been massively interested in the subject but ordered this to see if my interest could be piqued. Suffice to say I don't really think this book is ideal for someone like me in my situation and I think an interest and prior knowledge in the subject is required to get the most out of this book. As such I cannot give it five stars but I think a four star review is fair and accurate in my opinion.

This is a lovely little book which has some fascinating information as well as some that is very useful and great hints, tips and diagrams. We also found it very easy to read and dip in and out of. We are looking forward to using this next year and hopefully being able to spot all the highlights.I've never heard of an Almanac outside of sports of movies so discovering this was an eye opener for me. It really is full of great information to make the most of the night sky in this country over the next year. We just have to hope the skies are cloud free on the relevant dates now we know when and where to be looking!

This is a review for the Night Sky Almanac for 2025, from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich.At first glance, this is a very appealing book. The hardboard cover is attractively coloured and printed with an interesting design. It would be a lovely book to casually place in a visible spot in order to impress your visitors!Written content is pretty good, as are the diagrams. There is a month by month guide to key astronomical events, sunrises/sunsets, phases of the moon etc. Each month also features an extra small piece. For example, January's section includes an entry about Giovanni Cassini. In February, we learn about Vera Rubin.The book is black and white throughout which is a little disappointing. This makes most of the actual space photos somewhat pointless as we just get a vague splotches rendered in greyscale. I understand why a hardback costing just £9.99 would need to be black and white, but I think the book's designers should have recognised the limitations of black and white images and used more diagrams or a better selection of photos with greater light/dark contrast.There's also been a strange decision to have quite a wide margins throughout the book. This means that the text is pushed into the centre and therefore text closest to the central fold is quite difficult to read. It feels like a very poor design choice and makes me less inclined to pick the book up to read.Overall, if you want a pretty book to serve as decoration, then this may fit the bill. However, if you actually want to learn about astronomy month by month, you are probably better off looking at this information online.