Customer Reviews

Astronomer's Computer Companion

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

For anybody with an interest in astronomy, and owns a pc or mac, this book is a must have. At first, I thought it would be rather "dry" reading. But, I soon found it to be written in very easly understood language that even a laymen like myself could understand and enjoy. It has a wealth of info. on web addresses on almost any aspect of astronomy; I was amazed at how many there are! And, it has lots of pictures of stars and galaxies, which I personally like.

It's about time this book was published. There are so many really neat things an amateur astronomer can do with his computer. This book finally explains what and how a desktop computer is an astronomer's best friend. The included CD has some great programs and the book is a wealth of URLs and WEB addresses for all sorts of things astronomical. If you're into astronomy and have a destktop (Windows or Apple) get this book!

To be honest, I really didn't WANT to write a good review of this book. In my experience a book that does anything to overview the WWW does itself and its readers a disservice since reality will make it quickly out of date.

Surprisingly, the "Astronomer's Computer Companion," written in late 1999, is actually aging well. A good majority of the web sites it references still do exist and are helpful. Jeff & Ron's writing style is easy to understand and also easy on the mind without crossing the line into outright fluff.

This book is most useful for the armchair astronomer who has good access to a computer and the internet and who doesn't want to waste a lot of time aimlessly going through search engines. Jeff & Ron have done the work for you and again, surprisingly, the work still stands up well even in the face of a very quickly changing field.

They did a very credible job with a rather difficult environment to work with.

I expected a large portion of the book to be on scope control and image acquisition. In reality only the last chapter is on that topic and the majority of the book is on astronomy through the web and through custom software. As such this is an excellent field guide to desktop astronomy.

Organized like a trip through the solar system and into the universe the book contains multitudes of links and references to points around the web and custom software. The illustrations are primarily screenshots of the software.

Given the content on the book I think more attention could have been paid to organization. The embedding of hundreds of URLs makes the text hard to read. However, that doesn't negate the fact that there a lot of research has gone into making this a comprehensive guide to what is available for computer astronomy.

Well worth the look for the look for the amateur astronomer or particularly for teachers looking to find online resources for their courses.

The concept was great when the book was first published, but as of Jan. 2012, a lot of the websites listed are sadly out of date or no longer available. If this were 2000, I would say this was a must have addition to any astronomer's library. Unless the authors update the book and come out with a new version, don't waste your money.

I wanted to like this book but in the end I have to wonder what the purpose of buying a book whose contents can be found in 10 minutes searching the internet. This book was perhaps of some value 5 years ago. I expected that this book would be more than a description of websites and programs and contain some 'how-to' information. Pages 293 through 482 were used to describe what was on the cd.

There are better astronomy books out there and the software and website descriptions properly belong on the internet.