My name is Steve Lauritson. The idea for this website came from - 2009 The International Year of Astronomy. I have been a keen astronomer for the last 40 years and I thought it would be a good idea to have a website where the beginner can find all the basic information they need in one place and without having to spend any money. There are a lot of good astronomical websites about that provide information for free but a lot of them are for people who are already interseted in astronomy. As I live in Bristol UK, all the information supplied is for the Bristol area but can still be used by anyone in the country.

I have written a book - Introduction to Astronomy (which is totally free), that gives the beginner all the information they need to identify the major stars and constellation in the sky, and also what they can expect to see in the night sky each month. This can be downloaded from the link below:

Click here to download Introduction to Astronomy

I hope that this site will lead to more people taking an interest in this fascinating subject.

Click Here to e-mail me any comments or suggestions about Introduction to Astronomy or this website

Take your own Photographs of Stars, Planets and Nebula by controlling a robotic telescope. Click here for more information and links to their websites

Although the monthly charts in Introduction to Astronomy give you an idea of how the stars look during the month, if you are serious about Astronomy then you are going to need a Planisphere. A Planisphere shows the posistions of the stars in the sky for any given time of the year. An excellent one that I would recommend is Stellarium. It is available as a free download for the PC and MAC from:

http://www.stellarium.org/