Ridpath, Star Tales

This concise survey of the lore of the constellations is a great read, made more captivating by the abundant illustrations from the star atlases of Flamsteed and Bode.  Here at The Sky Tonight, each of our constellation pages links to Ridpath's Star Tales website.  Ridpath describes his Star Tales website as an expanded form of the book:

"I continued to research constellation history, so that this revised and expanded web version has become a true biography of the constellations from Ptolemaic times to the present: not just the 88 officially recognized figures which are described in Chapter Three, but also two dozen others that fell by the wayside, featured in Chapter Four. One enhancement not found in the original book is notes on how Chinese astronomers visualized the stars, a subject still poorly understood in the west. Further updates and improvements to these pages are made from time to time."