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...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521319765
• ISBN13: 9780521319768
• Release Date: December 1985
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 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.