The Amateur Astronomer

With some justification, many amateur astronomers believe astrophysics is a very difficult subject, requiring at least degree-level mathematics to understand it properly.

As an amateur astronomer with years of experience, I marvel at the joy experienced by a beginner who successfully hunts down their first deep-space object in a telescope. No matter what age or skill level, "nailing" a previously unobserved object through the eye­ piece, both instantly defines their love of the hobby and gives a feeling of scientific accomplishment no matter how well known to others the object may be. With the advancement in computer-guided telescopes and automatic object center­ ing, the amateur astronomy hobby has experienced tremendous and unprecedented growth. First timers are attending public observing sessions or summer star parties with low-cost computer-controlled telescopes, and are instantly rewarded with views of celes­ tial objects with strange names and numbers. But: what to look at?

Conventional star atlases are great for locating constellations and individual stars but The Star Atlas Companion goes one step further and describes the physical properties of more than 1,100 stars. With the aid of scale diagrams, the reader can get a real sense of the sizes, shapes, distances, and surface features of many of the stars visible to the naked eye in both the Nothern and Southern Hemispheres. Information on their rotational velocities and periods is given together with their spectral type and luminosity. Binary and multiple star systems are explained in detail. Special mention is made of Barnard's, Kapteyn's, Kepler's, and Van Maanen's Stars and the properties of many open clusters are given. With its emphasis on helping the amateur astronomer gain a better understanding of what they are looking at. The Star Atlas Companion will provide a new dimension to observing the star and is an invaluable supplement to any star atlas.