Mathematical Astronomy for Amateurs

By E.A. Beet

Book Overview

Although this is a book that can be read straight through for pleasure, there are many suggestions of practical things to do both indoors and outdoors, while for the person who wishes to gain real confidence is making calculations of, for example, stellar and planetary positions, there are exercises to work through and answers to them.

Metric measurements are used throughout and appendices provide such useful information as symbols, abbreviations and almanacs. There are over forty line diagrams.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393333426
• ISBN13: 9780393333428
• Release Date: January 1980
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 156 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

A truly enjoyable read, providing additional optional "real world" experiments and exercises with so

Many astronomy books almost completely ignore mathematics, or at the other extreme require considerable mathematical maturity. This falls nicely in the niche between those endpoints. It is a truly fascinating book, requiring only basic pre-calculus and a minimal amount of spherical geometry to appreciate, with most of the spherical geometry used presented in the text. Each chapter is divided into bite-sized sections, averaging about three pages each. This makes the book particularly easy to put down and restart, without losing your train of thought in the middle of a section. The book is a nice combination of explanation, optional exercises, and "real" activities, where the information presented can be used in astronomical experiments. The text, excluding exercises, is only about 100 pages long and the book can be read leisurely in a few days, simply as a work of non-fiction. If you want to gain more from the book, you can also complete the optional experiments and exercises for which answers are provided. Highly recommended as a quite enjoyable read, as well as a gentle introduction to mathematical astronomy, even for those with minimal mathematical maturity.