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Reflector Book Review:
Meteors
Category: Science of Astronomy
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Meteors
Neil Bone
Sky Publishing Corp., $18.95
176 pp. Softcover
The appeal of meteor observing is
due, no doubt, to its unvarnished simplicity: I don't
need a 10-meter behemoth on some rarefied mountain top.
Nor must I launch robotic craft or bury photomultipliers
in the Antarctic ice to spy these objects. Gosh, no.
I just saunter out to the backyard and raise the lids
on my peepers.
And putting peepers to productive
use - along with our cameras and perhaps even a spare
FM receiver - is the thrust of Neil Bone's Meteors.
Certainly it's no exaggeration to claim that much of
the where-from, the how-many, the what're-they-made-of
nature of these random asteroid and comet flecks piercing
our upper atmosphere has been revealed through low-budget,
amateur-driven efforts.
This is a book about doing serious
amateur astronomy. Casual, concise, illustrated simply
with line drawings and black-and-white photos, Meteors
is offered as the not-so-neophyte amateur's observing
primer; how to make tallies, how to resolve their shower
membership, capture their images and spectra on film,
clock velocities, and gauge magnitudes.
The book, as you would expect, begins
with the obligatory entree of meteor science. And no
one would dare write such a work without providing a
menu of the year's tastiest meteor showers. Bone, indeed,
follows through. The spectacular showers are awarded
special attention, with graphs of zenithal hourly rates,
radiant-drift charts, and magnitude distribution histograms
- detail that illuminates each shower's "personality."
But these, really, are ancillary features;
the book's main course is the how-to of meteor observing.
Only, I regret to report, the main course being somewhat
undercooked. The foreword to Meteors claims that
it is a "source book." But too much was left unsaid
to deserve this label. For example, we're told about
gnomonic charts for recording meteor paths; never are
we shown one, nor how it differs from star map projections
found in, say, Norton's.
We learn of meteor triangulation with
simultaneous coordinated photography; the availability
of small computers should make the reduction of these
data far less burdensome than in years past. Alas, no
explicit procedures are offered or referenced.
Detecting meteors via FM radio is
yet another rewarding avenue cited (especially since
there's no prerequisite for clear or dark skies); Bone
only hints at the equipment/techniques needed. Then
there's the meteor photography advice that leaves out
many of the practical pearls of wisdom scattered among
issues of Sky and Telescope over the past few
years. In each of these instances I would trade gladly
the seemingly out-of-place final chapter (about comets,
aurorae, and noctilucent clouds) for more gritty specifics
on methods.
At the very least, a purported source
book must supply an ample reference/bibliography section.
How curious to find that David Levy and Stephen Edberg's
50-odd page booklet for the Astronomical League, Observe
Meteors, is far more complete in this area.
So a source book it's not. But in
its defense, I would add that an encyclopedic work could
not be produced for such a reasonable price. Sky Publishing
has begun launching a new series of guidebooks for the
eyes-on amateur astronomer; Meteors is the flagship
effort. In producing a good, general, affordable, and
up-to-date overview of meteor observing, they've succeeded.
My preference, though, is for a book more generous in
citing additional detail-rich sources.
Mark Gingrich
Eastbay Astronomical Society, San Leandro, CA
Reviewed in the August 1995 issue.
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