It is annoying when articles and books about things to look at in the sky give only ‘RA/Dec’ coordinates for finding each object, and glossy, colourful pictures made with time exposures. Many amateurs have smallish telescopes or only binoculars, and aren’t able to rigidly fix their instruments or accurately set the mounting.
We need to know where objects are to be found, not by reference to coordinates, but by using the surrounding stars. And the best we will actually see will often be a faint smudge.
Turn Left at Orion has as its admirable aim to stop all those simple telescopes ending up in the attic gathering dust, and to get them back out in the garden gazing at the heavens. It provides a tour of a hundred relatively interesting objects, double stars, clusters, nebulae and the like, with a nice paragraph about what makes each object special.
