Practical Astronomy With Your Calculator

	Practical Astronomy With Your Calculator by Peter Duffett-Smith 185 pages Level: Introductory Detailed instructions on how to perform useful astronomical calculations on a calculator or a computer.
"Practical Astronomy With Your Calculator" is a how to guide that enables someone with either a computer or calculator to perform accurate astronomical calculations and predictions. Most of the 75 sections are dedicated to a single type of calculations. Many of the calculations are dependent on earlier sections. All the instructions are displayed in two columns. The first column gives a short, but clear explanation of what calculation must be formed, while the second column gives the results of a worked out example. By following the instructions and comparing his or her results to the example, the user can check if he or she really understands what is required. The only mathematics that is needed besides the basic add, subtract, multiplication and divide operations, are the trigonometric functions: sin, cosine, tangent and their inverses. While many of the shorter calculations can be easily performed with a hand calculator (Duffett-Smith has written a companion book for computers), this is not really very practical for the more elaborate calculations. For instance, it would be very difficult to perform the very large number of operations needed to calculate moonrise without some errors creeping in. But the inclusion of intermediate values for the worked out examples, eases the task of implementing the calculations on a computer, although angles are given in degrees and not in radians as is typical in most computer languages. There is little attempt to explain WHY the various calculations work. All the technical terms are explained and there is an excellent glossary but someone who has no understanding of the basic astronomical terminology is going to find this book tough going. For those who understand basic astronomy and trigonometry "Practical Astronomy With Your Calculator" provides clear description on how to calculate many of the most interesting astronomical occurrences.
Review by Ed Ehrlich
Table Of Contents
Preface to the third edition About this book and how to use it Time 1 Calendars 2 The date of Easter 3 Converting the date to the day number 4 Julian day numbers 5 converting the Julian day number to the calendar date 6 Finding the day of the week 7 converting hours, minutes and seconds to decimal hours 8 Converting decimal hours to hours, minutes and seconds 9 Converting the local time to UT 10 Converting UT to local civil time 11 Sidereal time (ST) 12 Conversion of UT to GST 13 conversion of GST to UT 14 Local sideral time (LST) 15 converting LST to GST 16 Ephemeris time (ET) and terrestial dynamic time (TDT) Coordinate systems 17 Horizon coordinates 18 Equatorial coordinates 19 Ecliptic coordinates 20 Galactic coordinates 21 Converting between decimal degrees and degrees, minutes and seconds 22 Converting between angles expressed in degrees and angles expressed in hours 23 Converting between one coordinate system and another 24 Converting between right ascension and hour-angle 25 Equatorial to horizon coordinate conversion 26 Horizon to equatorial coordinate conversion 27 Ecliptic to equatorial coordinate conversion 28 Equatorial to ecliptic coordinate conversion 29 Equatorial to galactic coordinate conversion 30 Galactic to equatorial coordinate conversion 31 Generalized coordinate transformations 32 The angle between two celestial objects 33 Rising and setting 34 Precession 35 Nutation 36 Aberration 37 Refraction 38 Geocentric parallax and the figure of the Earth 39 Calculating corrections for parallax 40 Heliographic coordinates 41 Carrington rotation numbers 42 Selenographic coordinates 43 Atmospheric extinction The Sun 44 Orbits 45 The apparent orbit of the Sun 46 Calculating the position of the Sun 47 Calculating orbits more precisely 48 Calculating the Sun's distance and angular size 49 Sunrise and sunset 50 Twilight 51 The equation of time 52 Solar elongations The planets, comets and binary stars 53 The planetary orbits 54 Calculating the coordinates of a planet 55 Finding the approximate positions of the planets 56 Perturbations in a planet's orbit 57 The distance, light-travel time and angular size of a planet 58 The phases of the planets 59 The position-angle of the bright limb 60 The apparent brightness of a planet 61 Comets 62 Parabolic orbits 63 Binary-star orbits The Moon and eclipses 64 The Moon's orbit 65 Calculating the Moon's position 66 The Moon's hourly motions 67 The phases of the Moon 68 The position-angle of the Moon's bright limb 69 The Moon's distance, angular size and horizontal parallax 70 Moonrise and moonset 71 Eclipses 72 The 'rules' of eclipses 73 Calculating a lunar eclipse 74 Calculating a solar eclipse 75 The Astronomical Calendar Glossary of terms Symbols and abbreviations Index

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