Cataclysmic Cosmic Events and How to Observe Them

Martin Mobberley

ISBN 10: 0387799451 / ISBN 13: 9780387799452

Editore: Springer New York, Springer New York Nov 2008, 2008

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This item is printed on demand - Print on Demand Titel. Neuware -In the Victorian era ¿ or for non-British readers, the mid-to-late nineteenth century ¿ amateur astronomy tended to center on Solar System objects. The Moon and planets, as well as bright comets, were the key objects of interest. The brighter variable stars were monitored, but photography was in its infancy and digital imaging lay a century in the future. Today, at the start of the twenty-first century, amateurs are better equipped than any professionals of the mid-twentieth century, let alone the nineteenth. An amateur equipped with a 30-cm telescope and a CCD camera can easily image objects below magnitude 20 and, from very dark sites, 22 or 23. Such limits would have been within the realm of the 100- and 200-inch reflectors on Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar in the 1950s, but no other observatories. However, even those telescopes took hours to reach such limits, and then the photographic plates had to be developed, fixed, and examined by eye. In the modern era digital images can be obtained in minutes and analyzed ¿on the fly¿ while more images are being downloaded. Developments can be e-mailed to other interested amateurs in real time, during an observing session, so that when a cataclysmic event takes place amateurs worldwide know about it. As recently as the 1980s, even professional astronomers could only dream of such instantaneous communication and proc- sing ability.Springer Verlag GmbH, Tiergartenstr. 17, 69121 Heidelberg 256 pp. Englisch. Codice articolo 9780387799452

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Titolo: Cataclysmic Cosmic Events and How to Observe...

Casa editrice: Springer New York, Springer New York Nov 2008

Data di pubblicazione: 2008

Legatura: Taschenbuch

Condizione: Neu

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto:

This book is about observing dramatic and often bizarre cosmic events. Observation of gamma ray bursts, cataclysmic variable star outbursts, distant supernovae, and even active galactic nuclei might be thought to be far beyond the range of amateur observers' but this is not the case. Recent technical developments in CCD equipment, powerful PCs, new observing and processing techniques, and professional satellite monitoring systems have opened a range of high-value niche areas of scientific astronomy to amateurs. Cataclysmic Cosmic Events and How to Observe them explains what these events are, what we know of their physics, and how amateur astronomers can observe them.

Informazioni sull?autore:

Martin Mobberley has a BSc Honours degree in Electronic Engineering from Brunel University, and is a former British Astronomical Association President and Goodacre Medallist. He a prolific writer, and is the author of Astronomical Equipment for Amateurs (Springer, 1998) and The New Amateur Astronomer (Springer, 2004); Lunar & Planetary Webcam User’s Guide (Springer, 2006); Supernovae and How to Observe them (NYP), and Total Eclipses and How to Observe them (NYP). He has contributed chapters to three other Springer Practical Astronomy Series Books. He has published many papers in Astronomy Now, The Journal of the British Astronomical Association, The Astronomer, and Sky & Telescope.