Astronomy with Your Personal Computer

By Peter Duffett-Smith and Peter J. Duffett-Smith

Book Overview

This is a book for the amateur astronomer who wishes to carry out astronomical calculations using a personal computer with the minimum of fuss. It is not specific to any make of machine, neither are the programmes confined to specific calculations, Rather, it presents a collection of twenty-six subroutines, written in a portable version of BASIC, which can be mixed and matched according to personal requirements. Furthermore, the user need only have a broad understanding of the problem; the subroutines themselves take care of the details. For example, the routines can be used to calculate the time of rising of any of the planets in any part of the world at any time in the future or past; or they may be used to find the circumstances of the next solar eclipse visible from a particular place. Almost every problem likely to be encountered by the amateur astronomer can be solved by a suitable combination of the routines given here.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521319765
• ISBN13: 9780521319768
• Release Date: December 1985
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.10 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Review of Astronomy With Your Personal Computer

Good set of astronomical algorithms and GWBASIC code for them + explanations. Code would need to be converted into a more modern language, but the algorithms are just as valid. Of course, more extensive and precise algorithms exist, but these are a good optimization of simplicity and accuracy.

Excelent book with clearly commented source

I bought this book out of curiosity, and found the functions fun to play with. I ported some of them to 16bit assembly language and had to make a floating point adder as this book uses a lot of real type numbers. However, the code may not run in newer Basic compilers like Qbasic as the syntax is more for AppleIIe/Commodore 64 basics. So some porting will be necessary.

excelent but Sadly out of Time .

Although the book covers a great range of astronomical programs, its psudo-code doesn't make for easy translation into other landuages like C++ or Pascal. He goes through the program one by one, but one can't help but feel it was ment to writen as one big program. Not for the novice astronomer or programmer.