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Title: Practical Astronomy with your Calculator by Peter Duffett-Smith ISBN: 0-521-35699-7 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 02 February, 1989 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.87 (15 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Excellent Value
Comment: 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.
Rating: 5
Summary: Very good book
Comment: This is a very good book. You have short explanation and practical application in calculating celestial coordinate transformation,calendar transformation, planets position,eclipse etc. and even precession phenomena. For this latter, elementary knowledge of matrix calculation would be helpful: in any case without going through matrix theory the practicals rules in how to handle them are given.
I strongly advise this book to anybody interested in practical and easy calculation (with high accuracy) of the most important astronomical phenomena.
Rating: 5
Summary: A excellant starting book on computational astronomy
Comment: This is an excellant book for starting of computational astronomy. I read this book when I was being a secondary school student (at 1985). This book can give me clear and fundamental idea and concept required for computational astronomy, eg, time, coordinates. The English and mathematics involved is within the reach of secondary school student.
I am highly recommending this book.
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Title: Textbook on Spherical Astronomy by William Marshall Smart, Robin Michael Green ISBN: 0521291801 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 07 July, 1977 List Price(USD): $48.00 |
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Title: Astronomy on the Personal Computer (with CD-ROM) by Oliver Montenbruck, Thomas Pfleger ISBN: 3540672214 Publisher: Springer Verlag Pub. Date: 15 May, 2000 List Price(USD): $69.95 |
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Title: An Introduction to Celestial Mechanics by Forest Ray Moulton ISBN: 0486646874 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 June, 1984 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Calendrical Calculations: The Millennium Edition by Edward M. Reingold, Nachum Dershowitz ISBN: 0521777526 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 2001 List Price(USD): $40.00 |
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Title: Fundamentals of Astrodynamics by et al., Roger Bate ISBN: 0486600610 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 June, 1971 List Price(USD): $15.95 |
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