Amateur Astronomer's Handbook

by J.B. Sidgwick, Space

Timeless, comprehensive coverage of telescopes, mirrors, lenses, mountings, telescope drives, micrometers, spectroscopes, more. ". . . highly recommended for very serious nonprofessional astronomers." — A Guide to the Literature of Astronomy. 189 illustrations. Reprint of 1971 edition.

Genres: Science

576 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1962

Reviews

[Carrie]

An indispensable practical astronomy guide. The first revision was published shortly after WWII, and because of this it has a unique virtue among scientific handbooks. Sprinkled throughout this strictly practical, technical text are subtle, poignant admonitions to a shell-shocked population to shake off the recent horrors of life on Earth and look up at the wonders of the night sky that have not been, and cannot be, damaged by the intermittent and devastating folly of mankind. An irreplaceable volume.

[Paul]

I bought this years ago under the mistaken impression that it was about *astronomy*; it is about *telescopes* and various ancillary facts about their use. Being now a professor with responsibility for teaching undergraduates a tiny bit of astronomy and access to a couple of telescopes, I finally got around to actually reading it. The book is avowedly uneven in its treatment, giving cursory mention of topics when in the author's judgment some reasonably available (in 1955...) reference treats the matter well enough and should be on the interested astronomer's shelf. Mathematical rigor is of no interest here. There is still a wealth of quirky, interesting information in an idiosyncratic order if one has an interest in finding out "how things work" in the specific sense of where astronomical facts actually come from.