Spies in the Sky: Surveillance Satellites in War and Peace by Jess K. GilmourEnglish | PDF (True)| 2003 | 157 Pages | ISBN : 1852334746 | 37.7 MB
As an amateur astronomer with years of experience, I marvel at the joy experienced by a beginner who successfully hunts down their first deep-space object in a telescope. No matter what age or skill level, "nailing" a previously unobserved object through the eye piece, both instantly defines their love of the hobby and gives a feeling of scientific accomplishment no matter how well known to others the object may be. With the advancement in computer-guided telescopes and automatic object center ing, the amateur astronomy hobby has experienced tremendous and unprecedented growth. First timers are attending public observing sessions or summer star parties with low-cost computer-controlled telescopes, and are instantly rewarded with views of celes tial objects with strange names and numbers. But: what to look at?