I can’t remember the last time we had a night clear enough for stargazing. I wouldn’t normally notice such things, sitting out on the deck with my chilled glass of pinot gris, but since reading Richard Hall’s How To Gaze At The Southern Stars, I’ve been casting my eyes increasingly heavenwards.

I’ve had Hall’s book for a couple of months now, and I’ve found myself dipping back into it occasionally. Which surprises me: aside from a brief fascination with UFOs when I was in my teens, I haven’t thought much about worlds beyond our own. Hall’s style is engaging and extremely readable, and he knows exactly how to mix serious stuff with eye-opening factoids.

Did you know that the charts used by most modern astrologers are over a thousand years out of date, and your ‘star sign’ is not your real star sign? Me neither. And I didn’t know that the term ‘dog day afternoon’ comes from the position of Sirius, one of the Dog Stars, marking the arrival of the hottest time of the year in 500BC.

How To Gaze At The Southern Stars contains more prosaic information too, such as how to ‘read’ the night sky from New Zealand and the dates of the biggest meteor showers. But even this is fascinating. It’s the way Hall tells it.

When he’s not writing books or broadcasting on Newstalk ZB, Hall works at Wellington's Carter Observatory. His latest sideline is Stonehenge Aotearoa, a Pacific-inspired reconstruction of the original located in rural Wairarapa. The mind boggles as to what that will be like. It apparently opens next month, and I could be tempted to visit.