Astronomy or Cosmology Christmas gift ideas

Ivan Seeking

I have a friend asking for ideas for an A or C oriented gift, including things that might be a bit of a scam, like having a star named after you. I know that you can buy land on the moon but that is expensive. Any ideas?

turbo

Star Vistas. It is a wonderful coffee-table book of astrophotography with forwords by Sir Arthur C. Clark, Sir Patrick Moore, and doctor Brian May (yes THAT Brian May). Greg Parker does the imaging and Noel Carboni does the image processing. They are both great guys, and they are tops at what they do. I am a member of a forum on which they give advanced views of their images, even while they are in progress, and their work is incredible.

Edit: They give interesting information about the objects that they image, and they keep the descriptions accurate, but within the reach of laymen.

darthoctopus

anything affordable? =\

turbo

$24 plus FREE S&H for a large art-book of astrophotos. I don't think I could get much cheaper than that for something relating to astronomy or cosmology.

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Vistas-Co...0470396&sr=1-1

IMP

Maybe a Klein bottle made of glass?
http://www.kleinbottle.com/

Ivan Seeking

Thanks for the suggestions so far. Those have been passed along in addition to an offer for land on the moon, for $29 an acre.

Freeman Dyson

Don't they make some kind of models of planets and stars? That you put together yourself. May be kind of cheesey and childish but I might consider getting something like that for myself. A lot of the stuff seems to be for kids though.

You could also make a t shirt with some relevant slogan and design. Design it yourself or NASA has a space store with some items. You can also buy part of a meteorite from NASA for like $25 I think.

lincs-b

I really like these http://www.bathsheba.com/crystal/largescale/. I once saw one of saturn but can't find it now.
If not then like everyone else has said books or prints are always nice.

Freeman Dyson

This site has a lot.

http://scientificsonline.com/category.asp_Q_c_E_421182

i just googled astronomy gifts

Norman

HA! I bought all my groomsmen an acre as a present for standing in my wedding with me.

Other ideas:

The Universe (DVD) - From the history channel. I saw the first season for $30 somewhere last weekend.

Celestron SkyMaster Giant 15x70 Binoculars with Tripod Adapter - currently $49.99 ($50 off) at Amazon right now.

Understanding Cosmology (book) - a little book put out by Scientific American I believe. It was accessible at an advanced High school / undergrad level I thought.