Hardbound, 6 by 9 inches, 373 pages. Regular Retail $29.95
About Mathematical Astronomy Morsels IV
In his Preface to Mathematical Morsels III Jean Meeus writes: We are living in a period of important astrophysical and cosmological research. Many astronomical journals and scientific books deal with subjects such as birth and evolution of stars, black holes, dark matter, gamma-ray bursts, supernova remnants or collisions between galaxies. Of course this is important matter, but one almost seems to have forgotten the `old' astronomy, the classical, mathematical science of the sky. And yet, without this fundamental astronomy modern research on the universe new would never have been possible.
And to this Roger Sinnott responded “In his Preface the author hints that some readers might accuse him of practicing “old” astronomy. Don't let that fool you. The problems he tackles would have fascinated astronomers of the early 20 th and prior centuries, but those poor souls faced a brick wall of computational difficulty. They had to work out all their answers laboriously, with a pencil and paper. Freed, from that limitation, the author uses today's computers to address each topic with a rigor and finesse beyond the wildest dreams of any old-time practitioner.
This conversation continues in this “Morsels IV” where Jean Meeus concludes his Preface as follows: Certainly this book will not make astronomy to progress. Rather, most subjects discussed in this book belong to what might be called recreational astronomy. While making the calculations and writing the text, we felt being as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote in The Hound of the Basikerville
A dabbler in science, Mr. Holes, a picker up
of shells on the shores of the great unknown ocean.
And not too far into this book he cites Maurice Ravel's Une Barque sur l'Océan (a boat at sea) piano piece as launching point into a study of when a horizon skimming Moon might look like a boat at sea. Interested? Here are 68 more subjects that have washed upon the beach of Jean Meeus ' imagination.
Click here for a PDF of the Table of Contents
About The Author
Jean Meeus , born in 1928, studied mathematics at the University of Louvain ( Leuven ) in Belgium , where he received the Degree of Licentiate in 1953. From then until his retirement in 1993, he was a meteorologist at Brussels Airport . His special interest is spherical and mathematical astronomy. He is a member of several astronomical associations and the author of many scientific papers. He is co-author of Canon of Solar Eclipses (1966), the Canon of Lunar Eclipses (1979) and the Canon of Solar Eclipses (1983). His Astronomical Formulae for Calculators (1979, 1982,1985 and 1988) has been widely acclaimed by both amateur and professional astronomers. Further works, published by Willmann-Bell, Inc., are Elements of Solar Eclipses 1951-2200 (1989), Transits (1989), Astronomical Algorithms (1991 and 1998), Astronomical Tables of the Sun , Moon and Planets (1983 and 1995), Mathematical Astronomy Morsels (1997), More Mathematical Astronomy Morsels (2002), and Mathematical Astronomy III (2004) . For his numerous contributions to astronomy the Inter national Astronomical Union announced in 1981 the naming of asteroid 2213 Meeus in his honor.