Practical Astronomy with your Calculator [Paperback]

Peter Duffett-Smith (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0521356997 | ISBN-13: 978-0521356992 | Publication Date: March 31, 1988 | Edition: 3

In its first two editions, Practical Astronomy With Your Calculator enjoyed tremendous success. Using clear and logical

Product Details

• Paperback: 200 pages
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press; 3 edition (March 31, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0521356997
• ISBN-13: 978-0521356992
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #191,538 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #44 in Books > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Astronomy & Space Science > Star-Gazing

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is as beautiful as an astrolabe, October 5, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Practical Astronomy with your Calculator (Paperback)

For all stargazers who have university level math, and those equipped with lighter high school stuff, this book is a gem. In a few pages, and with nothing more than a pocket calculator, it allows you to explore the universe in a way which only a few hundred years ago was only possible with extensive state-support and massive buildings such as Stonehenge, state-sponsored observatories, and teams of pedantic astrologers and stargazers.

Starting from the simple building blocks (converting your local time to Universal time), it progresses to more and more complex calculations, until finally at the end, you can calculate eclipses and planetary orbits. All the formulas needed for doing this are given in the book, and explained in great detail with many diagrams. All relevant astronomical data is also given. And for every calculation, a sample example is carried out with real numbers, which you can trace along with, so by the end of it you understanding is complete, practically as well as theoretically.

A must read for any astronomy buff. I highly recommend it. It produces the information age equivalent of that feeling of satisfaction you get when you build a telescope and look out onto the heavens yourself--without any intermediaries. Astronomy and stargazing are the activities which were the genesis of the scientific revolution, more than 6000 years ago. This book shows you just how its done.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nice at twice the price, January 22, 2001

By 

Rick - See all my reviews

This review is from: Practical Astronomy with your Calculator (Paperback)

Don't be misled by the title. The recipes supplied by Peter Duffett-Smith are aimed at making calculations easier with a hand held calculator. However they are easily adapted for creating utilities on personal computers. The material should be easily handled by anyone whose completed highschool algebra and some trigonometry.

The organization and format is well thought out. The earliest chapters deal with time and coordinates which are used in the more complex problems such as computing planet positions later in the book.

Each concept is explained in straight forward language and conventional algebraic formulas are supplied. I found this especially useful for programmers using higher languages such as C,Pascal or Java. Then a step by step practical example is provided that is suitable for a scientific hand calculator. Duffett-Smith is careful about displaying units; a mindfield for most scientific calculations.

My only minor criticism is that some of the typos errors could leave a user quite frustrated. On pp108 I found the value of Tp=0.240850 gave the correct answer while the tabulated value is 0.240852. Similarly, I on page 129, after repeated checks, I got a value of 7.08...AU for Rho compared with the value of 8.13AU in the book. The text cites a 7.2AU value from the Astronomical Almanac.

Otherwise this is one neat addition to the bookshelf of any amateur astronomer of individual interested in astromical calculations.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Value at $11.80, November 25, 2003

By 

Railbird (Boxborough, MA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Practical Astronomy with your Calculator (Paperback)

Amateur astronomers will be able to solve a multitude of practical problems with this book. If you are short on funds and have time to explore, this is the book for you. It is well organized and reasonably complete.

The extremely concise - bordering on laconic - style poses the danger that some readers may become discouraged and will give up. The low price makes it a tempting entry-level book, but the terse explanations means you'll have to do a lot of digging, which is a cookbook recipe to discourage newcomers to a field.

I have two critiques of this otherwise excellent work.

1.) The formulae presented in this book are a little too "cookbook" in for my tastes.

2.) Further they are only weakly validated, so it is difficult to know how accurate the results are.

The cookbook nature provides little insight into the physical problem being solved. It did motivate me to buy and study Smart's "Spherical Astronomy". If you want more than superficial answers, you'll need to dig deeper.

Validation is rarely a problem for amateurs. Most people who buy this book will program the recipes on their home computers. (Most are readily amenable to treatment in spreadsheets.) So far, no problem. But how do you know whether or not your calculation of the position of Mars 60,000 ago is any good?

I think that Meeus and Montenbruck largely avoid these problems, but at a much higher selling price.