My favourite all time astronomy books have got to be the 3 volume collection of Burnhams Celestial Handbook. It is absolutely magic reading, especially the first few chapters in Volume 1, where they take you on an imaginary ride in a spaceship at thousands of times the speed of light and you whizz all over the Galaxy seeing everything from black holes, quasars, and of course cruising back to the Solar System. The descriptions of stars, clusters etc in each constellation is mind blowing, and the profuse number of black and white photos is the icing on the cake. I even managed to take a photo of M7 and compared it with the photo in Burnham, and hey presto, the same star patterns were seen! The entire book is written in such an enthusiastic manner. If you havent got one, splash out and get the set - you will not regret it
