Customer Reviews

Astronomical Optics, Second Edition

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

 

 

Good, comprehensive book that explains both basics and advanced aspects of optics used in telescopes. Most of the book focuses on optical aberrations and shows how to construct various telescopes and other optical devices like spectrographs with minimized coma, astigmatizm or spherical aberration. The book has chapters about spectrographs, CCDs and active optics which may be helpful to anyone who considers to add such elements to his/her telescope.

This book has some unique features. It treats the subject matter carefully, and in detail. The content is very useful. The treatment of spectrometer optics is particularly useful. The weakness of the book is that the diagrams are not well done, and the notation can be confusing. Overall, a useful book.

Talk a lot about instrument. I think it's very helpful for those who want to know how telescope work. But little about data processing.

I'm afraid I can't give this book a very good review. The title should be "Mathematical Analyst of Telescope Aberrations." Even then, unless you are in the process of designing either a Cassegrain Telescope or a Schmidt Camera, the book does little except tell you what papers to consult. For my current project of building a lens based camera for my university's telescope, I found maybe 30 pages out of the entire book which were relevent. And John David Jackson's "Classical Electrodynamics did a better job of explaining most of those topics.