Book: Astronomy Hacks
Author: Bruce Thompson & Barbara Fritchman Thompson
Publisher: O’Reilly
Publication Date: June 2005
ISBN: 0-596-10060-4
Info: xx + 390
Price: $24.95

Having reviewed astronomy software for AppleLust over several years now, not to mention having had my book “Astronomy with a Home Computer” published earlier this year, I was excited to hear that O’Reilly were releasing an astronomy book this year. I’ve liked most of O’Reilly books I’ve read, but I was curious about how their publishing machine that has historically been oriented towards IT professionals would handle something aimed at amateurs. Moreover, the amateurs tend to have little formal training in the subject they enjoy as a hobby, so anything written for this group needs to reach across a broad range of skill levels.

Fortunately, I didn’t need to worry. O’Reilly can rest assured that the authors, Bruce Thompson and Barbara Fritchman Thompson have turned out a very fine book indeed. While I do have one or two issues with the content and the style, the range of material covered is outstanding, and for the price makes an interesting second book for a newcomer to the hobby to place alongside his or her chosen guide to the night sky. This book doesn’t, for example, contain many maps or lists of objects worth looking at, but is instead a book to explain how and why experienced amateur astronomers do things in a certain way.

One thing though: while touted as a field guide, I’m not absolutely sure that the glue binding and relatively thin paper used for this book are really going to last long in the cold, damp conditions. This is much more a book to read indoors rather than outdoors.

Themes and chapters

The title of the book is Astronomy Hacks, which probably reflects the desire to fit the book into O’Reilly’s Hack series more than anything else. There really aren’t very many projects or tricks in the book that could legitimately be called true hacks any more than understanding how the Mac operating system works makes me a hacker. The book is instead a collection of explanations and experiences that reveal to someone new to the hobby the best and most effective way to find and observe various astronomical objects. Even where the authors are describing techniques to improve a telescope or some other piece of kit, they are really explaining how to use these object properly rather than in some surreptitious but suprisingly effective way that you won’t find in the manual or other astronomy books.

So what’s missing that could be considered real, honest-to-goodness astronomy hacks? On my list would be ways to increase the weight of aluminium tripods and so increase telescope stability; how to turn a cheap webcam into a long exposure astrophotography one; and how to connect different types of computerised telescopes to different types of personal computers (i.e., PCs, Macs, and Linux machines). Linux and Mac users especially tend to be left out of the loop as far as amateur astronomy hardware goes, despite the fact that most such hardware actually works perfectly well with these computers, once you know how to connect them. But sadly these sorts of things are missing from the book, so it doesn’t really work as a hack-book in the same way as many of other O’Reilly’s Hack series volumes.

Having made it clear from the start that this book doesn’t include top secret hacks doesn’t diminish its usefulness. The structure of the book is to divide a succession of free-standing nuggets of information across four chapters. The first chapter is entitled Getting Started, and unsurprisingly enough covers some of the groundwork that the amateur needs to consider before making the best of what the hobby has to offer. Most of the stuff in this chapter is fairly pedantic and familiar — join a club, choose a good telescope, and so on — but the tail end of the chapter is very nice indeed, being aimed squarely at urban observers. Virtually all amateur astronomy books assume that you’re observing under pristine, dark skies, but if you’re an amateur living in a big city like London or LA, then even the option of driving to dark skies to get away from the light pollution is essentially non-existent.

While Thompson and Thompson appear to be working on that premise as well to some degree, they do (somewhat grudgingly) concede that their readers may well be stuck under light-polluted skies and so recommend some advice and equipment for what they call a grab-’n-go scope. With this instrument amateurs can pop out to the balcony or patio and take a quick peek at things like the Moon and planets, objects that are every bit as pretty when viewed from the heart of a big city. They make some excellent recommendations about telescopes, which, as someone who has frequently observed from a downtown district, I agree with whole-heartedly.

The second chapter covers actual observing, and again, while primarily describing the hobby as experienced under fairly dark skies, does include material useful to urban and suburban observers. Again, there isn’t anything here that you won’t find anywhere else, but what is nice is that so much is boiled down and presented in a single, easy to read chapter. For example, the description of the infamous Messier Marathon (an all-night session that allows you to see all 110 objects in Messier’s catalogue of deep sky objects) is especially nicely laid out. The optimal nights to perform this little stunt are given for the next few years, and then a timesheet shows you one possible order to bag all the objects before sunrise.

On the other hand, the section on astrophotography feels rather dated. While traditional SLR cameras, and their digital equivalents, make excellent tools for this kind of imaging, the reality is that most amateurs are starting out using cheap, all-in-one digital cameras and webcams. This is the topic that should have been covered instead, not least of all because there really are tonnes of hacks to be described for getting the most out of these types of imaging devices.

Chapter 3 is a bit more hack-oriented, describing ways to use and improve telescopes, primarily Dobsonian reflectors. One thing about this choice of focus is that it won’t travel well; Dobsonians are really only popular in the United States, in Japan, for example, refractors rule the roost, while in Europe and the UK, equatorially mounted Newtonians are much more popular. But since the prime market for this book will probably be the US, this isn’t so much a criticism as an observation.

The authors do offer some very sound advice on how to maintain a Dobsonian (or indeed any Newtonian reflector) taking the reader through various methods of collimation, cleaning, and so on. While this material is covered in many other books, the authors tackle it clearly and thoroughly here. Dobsonian-specific tricks include ways to improve the bearings and add counterweights.

The final chapter is a bit of a catch-all chapter, but what it lacks in coherence it more than makes up for in range. There’s stuff from choosing eyepieces through to using a palmtop computer to help you find objects in the dark. There’s a fair amount on computer software such as planetarium programs, but only a few titles are covered, and mostly from the perspective of people running a Windows PC. But Mac and Linux users aren’t completely ignored, KStars and XEphem getting a mention here and there.

Style

As with many books written by Americans, little concession is made for people using different forms of English. For example, the authors’ refer to an item known in the US as a “fanny pack”. Being British, I can’t help but snicker when I hear this: in the UK, a “fanny” is a completely different part of the anatomy (and I’ll give you a clue — only girls have ‘em!). Slang American phrases are also used, such as “grab-’n-go”, which should, of course, be written “grab ‘n’ go”, a grammatical subtlety that slipped by the proofreaders. Though not really an issue of style, the advice about bringing a gun to kill or scare away any deadly predators that approach will strike English readers as being just short of insane (not to mention illegal).

On the other hand measurements are usually given in SI units, such as millimetres, rather than Imperial units like inches. It would have been nice if they had been a bit more consistent, as there are numerous occasions where only Imperial units are used even in the same paragraph (for example, on page 49) but that minor annoyance aside, the book is essentially written in a way that will be accessible and useful to readers all around the world.

The cover shot is interesting, as it features a Tele Vue refracting telescope; in many ways Tele Vue is the astronomical equivalent of Apple, being an American company that turns out high-end products that may not dominate the market but certainly influences it profoundly.

Conclusion

This is a difficult book to review in some ways because it doesn’t obviously fit into one or other category. It is a book about astronomical hardware, but its coverage is partial, concentrating on manual Dobsonians while largely ignoring the popular computerised SCTS and Maksutovs. It’s aimed at users with fairly large telescopes and dark skies to observe under, yet includes a fair amount that will interest suburban astronomers with small telescopes and binoculars. There are lists of things to do, yet some popular adjuncts to the hobby, like webcam photography, are completely ignored.

Moreover, as an author of an astronomy book covering some of the material included in Astronomy Hacks, I’m inevitably going to be asked is this book better or worse than mine. It’s neither, because it’s completely different. What the two Thompsons have chosen to do is distil their 40+ years of observing experience into a single volume. This is both the strength and the weakness of the book: the advice the authors share with the reader is rock-solid and reliable, but their appreciation of some of the newer branches of the hobby are rather less well-developed than those of people who have only started observing within the last 5 or 10 years. But having said that, the gaps are few and forgivable, and for the price there is a huge amount included that anyone new to the hobby will find indispensable.