Tag Archives: hobbies

Observer’s Handbook, 2019 by RASC (2018) – BR00142 (2019) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸🐸

The PolyBlog
March 12 2019

Plot or Premise

This is the annual observer’s guide published by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

What I Liked

Each year, the Observer’s Guide is produced and sold to amateur and professional astronomers across North America, and those astronomers vary considerably in their capacity and interests. It’s hard to serve any “one group”, but as I am at the intro stage to the hobby, I’ll review from that perspective. Some highlights include:

  • List of observatories, star parties, planetaria (pp 11-14);
  • Observable satellites of the planets (pp 25-26);
  • Observing artificial satellites (p 38);
  • Overview of filters (pp 64-67);
  • Deep-sky observing hints by Alan Dyer (pp 85-87);
  • Lunar observing (pp 158-161);
  • The brightest stars (pp 274-283, 285); and,
  • The deep sky (pp 307-337).

Of course, it also has the key reference materials:

  • The Moon (pp 148-157);
  • The Sun (pp 184-193);
  • Dwarf and minor planets (pp 241-251); and,
  • Double and multiple stars (pp 291-294, 296-297).

And it has specific highlights for the year:

  • The Sky month-by-month (pp 94-121);
  • Times of sunrise and sunset for 2019 (pp 205-207);
  • 2019 transit of Mercury (pp 139-143);
  • The planets in 2019 (pp 211-229); and,
  • Comets in 2019 (p 264).

I’m happy too that some of the errors in URLs published last year have been corrected.

What I Didn’t Like

I still find the pages on telescope exit pupils (pp 50-53) to be incredibly dense. I keep meaning to find a more basic set of explanations online of it, but I never seem to get around to it. I would add the next section on magnification and contrast in deep sky observing (pp 54-57) as equally confusing. I have to believe that dense text can somehow be explained more easily to the newbie with some basic guidelines for common scopes and ages of users. Equally, I’m not thrilled with the astrophotography section (pp 91-93) which still lists the “big cameras” as best, in the same way that many photography websites ten years ago suggested that professionals would never go digital. There is an emerging market for people sharing prime shots they take with their smartphones — souvenir quality shots, not NASA shots — and it is almost completely ignored by the section (grudgingly it says “even cell phones”). I also find that the economic bias of last year towards higher-end binoculars and scopes continues. But those issues are mostly me just being picky — they aren’t enough to reduce the overall rating.

Disclosure

I received a copy of the guide as part of my annual membership in RASC.

The Bottom Line

Excellent edition for the year.

Observer’s Handbook, 2018 by RASC (2017) – BR00114 (2017) – 🐸🐸🐸🐸⚪

The PolyBlog
November 11 2017

Plot or Premise

This is the annual observer’s guide published by the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

What I Liked

One of the most obvious challenges for an Observer’s Guide of this kind is balancing the needs of newbies and moderate amateurs with the needs of advanced astronomers, photographers, and outright astrophysicists. However, I’m on the newer end of the spectrum, and I found the typical wealth of information such as using the handbook for teaching purposes and resources (p 17); observable satellites (p 25); filters (p 64); deep-sky observing hints (p 85); the sky month by month; and overviews on planets, dwarf planets, satellites, the sun, and various star options before getting to the deep-sky lists (which could benefit from better presentation). However, I think my favourite section was on the Moon. The entire handbook is “made” just having the info from Bruce McCurdy on lunar observing starting on page 158 as it is perfect for me. Relative shifts per day (p 158), Canadian content (p 160), the Hadley Rille (p 161), and the lunar certificate (p 161) are all great elements for me to try to see in the coming year.

What I Didn’t Like

I was surprised to see a number of errors in included URLs. While it is hard to stay evergreen, these were links that had not changed from last year and when I went back to the RASC website, the links worked just fine. Somehow they got edited in publication and never tested. Even links to the actual RASC website were wrong. There are also some highly technical pages on magnification, telescope parameters, night myopia, and exit pupils, and while correct, they are presented so densely that re-reading them left me more confused than informed. Finally, there is a strong economic bias that creeps into the texts in a few places — on binoculars, the only ones they mention as being good cost around $1500, and when talking about using Schmidt-Cassegrain scopes (often bought as they are quite portable), recommends just putting it in your backyard observatory, assuming, of course, that you have the money to have a house with a backyard with room and resources to build an observatory. In addition, there are numerous editing choices made throughout the text such as lists sorted by one variable instead of by one that might aid organization. I’ve already found myself copying lists from previous years online into spreadsheets so I can resort them into a more usable format.

Disclosure

I received a copy of the guide as part of my annual membership in RASC.

The Bottom Line

Solid guide but some editorial and tone issues throughout.