The first edition of this very successful book was a winner of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific's "Astronomy Book of the Year" award in 1986. The popularity of the book's programs is based on the ease with which the amateur astronomer can perform calculations on a personal computer. The routines are not specific to any make of computer and are user-oriented in that they utilize a simple version of the BASIC programming language and require only a broad understanding of any particular problem. Seven new subroutines in this new edition can be linked in any combination with the existing twenty-six. Since the programs themselves take care of details, they can be used, for example, to calculate the time of rising of any of the planets in any part of the world at any time in the future or past, or they may be used to find the circumference of the next solar eclipse visible from a particular place. In fact, almost every problem likely to be encountered by the amateur astronomer can be solved by a suitable combination of the routines given in this book. Peter Duffett-Smith is the author of another popular astronomy book: Astronomy with Your Calculator (3rd Edition), also published by Cambridge University Press.
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"This is a work which all amateur astronomers will want to possess." Times Higher Education Supplement
"This is one of the best publications of its type on the market today. The book is well written and illustrated. It is highly recommended." Journal of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers
"...an example of how wonderful a tool a computer and a few programs can be. With the subroutines in this book, the amateur astronomer can have more time to concentrate on the heavens and leave the earthly work of astronomical computations to the computer....a good sourcebook for those amateur astronomers who are not afraid of some simple programming or for getting someone who is familiar with programming interested in astronomy. It could be useful to those who want more accuracy in their space games." William H. MacIntosh, Computing Reviews
"This is one of the best publications of its type on the market today. The book is well written and illustrated. It is highly recommended." Journal of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers
"...an example of how wonderful a tool a computer and a few programs can be. With the subroutines in this book, the amateur astronomer can have more time to concentrate on the heavens and leave the earthly work of astronomical computations to the computer....a good sourcebook for those amateur astronomers who are not afraid of some simple programming or for getting someone who is familiar with programming interested in astronomy. It could be useful to those who want more accuracy in their space games." William H. MacIntosh, Computing Reviews
Book Description
Written in a portable version of BASIC, these subroutines enable the amateur astronomer to make calculations using a personal computer. This edition adds seven subroutines to the original twenty-six, all of which are non-specific to any one machine.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
I can't believe this book is still available,
By
This review is from: Astronomy with your Personal Computer (Paperback)
I own the original 1985 printing. I bought it for use on my AppleII+ probably back in 1985.
All the code is written for very basic BASIC. Yes, it is all suppose to be written as ONE program. The code routines all use GOSUB's. None of it is written for todays BASIC, or even older Basics like QuickBasic. Trying to translate or port the routines to todays languages is nearly impossible. First, it only supports Integer numbers, no floating point, so there is high inaccuracies in the calculations. You would spend more time trying to translate this code then you would going it from scratch. This book is too outdated to be of any use on todays computer languages. It was great in its day - it's useless now.
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
excelent but Sadly out of Time .,
By Paul Pierce (Ireland) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Astronomy with your Personal Computer (Paperback)
Although the book covers a great range of astronomical programs, its psudo-code doesn't make for easy translation into other landuages like C++ or Pascal. He goes through the program one by one, but one can't help but feel it was ment to writen as one big program. Not for the novice astronomer or programmer.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excelent book with clearly commented source,
By
This review is from: Astronomy with your Personal Computer (Paperback)
I bought this book out of curiosity, and found the functions fun to play with. I ported some of them to 16bit assembly language and had to make a floating point adder as this book uses a lot of real type numbers. However, the code may not run in newer Basic compilers like Qbasic as the syntax is more for AppleIIe/Commodore 64 basics. So some porting will be necessary.
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Inside This Book
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First Sentence:
"The handling programs in this book, whose names all begin with the letter H (e.g. HEQECL, HALTAZ, etc.) require the user to supply answers to questions such as 'Today's date?' or 'Geographical latitude?'." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
geocentric ecliptic longitude, local civil time, call local routine, geocentric ecliptic latitude, daylight saving correction, true ecliptic longitude, local reserved, include nutation, local sidereal time, umbral phase, solar elongation, corrected declination, anew date, apparent declination, apparent geocentric, mean daily motion, equatorial horizontal parallax, apparent coordinates, plotting mode, maximum eclipse, osculating elements, eclipse magnitude, given calendar date, decimal hours, geographical longitude Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The Astronomical Almanac, Comet Kohler, Convert Julian, Phase of Moon New!
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Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
"The handling programs in this book, whose names all begin with the letter H (e.g. HEQECL, HALTAZ, etc.) require the user to supply answers to questions such as 'Today's date?' or 'Geographical latitude?'." Read the first page Key Phrases - Statistically Improbable Phrases (SIPs): (learn more)
geocentric ecliptic longitude, local civil time, call local routine, geocentric ecliptic latitude, daylight saving correction, true ecliptic longitude, local reserved, include nutation, local sidereal time, umbral phase, solar elongation, corrected declination, anew date, apparent declination, apparent geocentric, mean daily motion, equatorial horizontal parallax, apparent coordinates, plotting mode, maximum eclipse, osculating elements, eclipse magnitude, given calendar date, decimal hours, geographical longitude Key Phrases - Capitalized Phrases (CAPs): (learn more)
The Astronomical Almanac, Comet Kohler, Convert Julian, Phase of Moon New!
Books on Related Topics | Concordance | Text Stats Browse Sample Pages:
Front Cover | Table of Contents | First Pages | Index | Back Cover | Surprise Me!
Citations (learn more)
This book cites 5
books:
8
books
cite this book:
See all 8 books citing this book
- Astronomical Formulae for Calculators by Jean Meeus in Front Matter, page 172, and Back Matter
- Illustrating BASIC (A Simple Programming Language) by Donald G. Alcock in Back Matter
- Textbook on Spherical Astronomy by W. M. Smart in Back Matter
- Practical Astronomy with your Calculator by Peter Duffett-Smith in Back Matter
- The Nautical Almanac by Nautical Almanac Office in Back Matter
- God and Science: Divine Causation and the Laws of Nature by Richard L. Thompson on page 204
- Easy PC Astronomy by Peter Duffett-Smith in Back Matter
- Hunting Whitetails by the Moon by Charles J. Alsheimer on page 217
- The Amateur Astronomer's Introduction to the Celestial Sphere by William Millar in Back Matter
- Night Sky: A Guide To Field Identification (Golden Field Guides) by Mark R. Chartrand in Back Matter
See all 8 books citing this book
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