Astronomical Discoveries You Can Make, Too! [electronic resource] : Replicating the Work of the Great Observers /
Buchheim, Robert K.author.
You too can follow in the steps of the great astronomers such as Hipparchus, Galileo, Kepler and Hubble, who all contributed so much to our modern understanding of the cosmos. This book gives the student or amateur astronomer the following tools to replicate some of these seminal observations from their own homes:   With your own eyes: Use your own observations and measurements to discover and confirm the phenomena of the seasons, the analemma and the equation of time, the logic behind celestial coordinates, and even the precession of the equinoxes.   With a consumer-grade digital camera: Record the changing brightness of an eclipsing binary star and show that a pulsating star changes color as it brightens and dims. Add an inexpensive diffraction grating to your camera and see the variety of spectral features in the stars, and demonstrate that the Sun’s spectrum is similar to one particular type of stellar spectrum.   With a backyard telescope: Add a CCD imager and you can measure the scale of the Solar System and the distance to a nearby star. You could even measure the distance to another galaxy and observe the cosmological redshift of the expanding universe.   Astronomical Discoveries You Can Make, Too! doesn’t just tell you about the development of astronomy; it shows you how to discover for yourself the essential features of the universe.
Description based upon print version of record.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Part I: Motions and Positions in the Sky -- Chapter 1: The Stars, the Sidereal and Solar Day, and the Seasons -- Chapter 2: Measuring Position and Describing Motion -- Part 2: The Moon -- Chapter 3: Introducing Earth's Satellite -- Chapter 4: The Moon in Three Dimensions, Occultations, and Parallax -- Chapter 5: The Moon’s Surface -- Part III: The Planets -- Chapter 6: Solar System Orbits -- Chapter 7: Planetary Phases and Moons -- Chapter 8: Scale and Light -- Part IV: The Stars -- Chapter 9: Observing Variable Stars -- Chapter 10: Barnard’s Star and the Copernican Model -- Part V: Astrophysics and Cosmology -- Chapter 11: Stellar Spectroscopy -- Chapter 12: Chapter 12: Solar Spectroscopy and the H-R Diagram -- Chapter 13: Our Galactic Neighbors -- Appendices.
You too can follow in the steps of the great astronomers such as Hipparchus, Galileo, Kepler and Hubble, who all contributed so much to our modern understanding of the cosmos. This book gives the student or amateur astronomer the following tools to replicate some of these seminal observations from their own homes:   With your own eyes: Use your own observations and measurements to discover and confirm the phenomena of the seasons, the analemma and the equation of time, the logic behind celestial coordinates, and even the precession of the equinoxes.   With a consumer-grade digital camera: Record the changing brightness of an eclipsing binary star and show that a pulsating star changes color as it brightens and dims. Add an inexpensive diffraction grating to your camera and see the variety of spectral features in the stars, and demonstrate that the Sun’s spectrum is similar to one particular type of stellar spectrum.   With a backyard telescope: Add a CCD imager and you can measure the scale of the Solar System and the distance to a nearby star. You could even measure the distance to another galaxy and observe the cosmological redshift of the expanding universe.   Astronomical Discoveries You Can Make, Too! doesn’t just tell you about the development of astronomy; it shows you how to discover for yourself the essential features of the universe.
Astronomy.
Observations, Astronomical.
Astronomy—Observations.
History.
Popular Science in Astronomy.
Astronomy, Observations and Techniques.
History of Science.