Review: The Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders November 12, 2009
Posted by sarah in: astronomy, reviews, science , trackback
Once upon a time in a country far away I was a young girl who loved looking at the stars. I didn’t know any other keen stargazers and the internet was still in its infancy, so I relied on books to help me work out what I was looking at.
These days, sadly, stargazing doesn’t feature very heavily in my life anymore given my light polluted dwellings but my earliest experiences of looking through telescopes did inspire me to get into helping design them myself, as a profession. So I was keen to have a read of one of O’Reilly‘s publications, The Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders, by Robert and Barbara Thompson, a copy of which found its way to my desk (h/t to Alasdair).
In their preface to the book, the Thompsons explain that every beginning amateur astronomer faces the same problem: “which objects to observe and how to find them”. Their book has a couple of short chapters on deep space objects in general (i.e. all the stuff up there that’s not in our solar system), and on the materials the beginning observer can use to explore the night sky. The rest of the book gives an alphabetical overview of 50 northern constellations, and the objects that can be found in them for the observer.
Skygazing books for beginners always seem to suffer from an identity crisis: are they supposed to be read indoors for information, or taken out into the night? The authors of Illustrated Guide suggest their book is primarily a field observing guide, but I would argue that it’s quite hefty to carry around. Perhaps the observer who has enough nous to have invested in a tripod, a good torch and a table (or a companion) could take this book outside with them; as a beginner I certainly would have lacked the dexterity and equipment to handle this textbook-sized tome as well as binoculars. But if you’re a little more organised than I was this shouldn’t be a problem.
Personally I always found ring-bound books by far the most practical for taking outside with me, although this does seem to be bound so that it will stay open where you left it.
The Thompsons are quite clearly experienced observers who know their technical stuff. The chapter on observing equipment – telescopes, binoculars, eyepieces and star charts – is excellent, with lots of personal anecdotes and tips.
The science introduction however, I felt was lacking in accuracy in places. The authors for example write that
A planetary nebula is the ruins of an old, red giant star that has exploded into short-lived prominence as a nova and then subsided into a small, hot white dwarf surrounded by a shell of expanding gas.
This is plainly wrong. A planetary nebula is created when a regular star runs out of fuel and becomes unstable, undergoing repeated cycles of expansion and contraction, until the inert core is no longer able to hold on to the outer envelope, which is ejected. The ejected material forms the nebula around the hot exposed core, a white dwarf. There is no explosion involved in this process, and certainly no nova explosion. A nova only occurs in the particular case where an existing white dwarf accretes material from its companion, resulting in a cataclysmic explosion that throws the acrreted material out into the interstellar medium. This does not result in the creation of a planetary nebula.
Another complaint I had is that the Thompsons don’t talk at all about geography. They list the dates on which each constellation reaches its highest point in the sky but fail to mention that this depends of course very strongly on the observer’s location. All the links to observing organisations are entirely US- (& Canada-) based. It is of course more practical to focus on the night sky from a given hemisphere or continent, but this warrants a bit of explanation.
The presentation of the individual constellations is nicely done, with useful and clear finding charts and good overview tables of the interesting objects in the region. There’s plenty there to keep a beginning amateur observer occupied for a couple of years – depending on how clear your skies are! If you decide to invest in some equipment, there is lots of good advice.
If you’re based in the US and want to get into stargazing, this book can help you on your way very nicely.
Buy it here:
Illustrated Guide to Astronomical Wonders: From Novice to Master Observer (DIY Science)
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