Preface

Summary

Together with its companion volume, How to Use a Computerized Telescope, this book is a guide for a new generation of amateur astronomers. The two books began as a single project, originally a list of interesting objects that I put together for my own use at the telescope. Soon I added a concise summary of the Meade LX200 operating manual. Simon Mitton of Cambridge University Press saw my notes and encouraged me to turn them into a book. As the project grew, it became two books instead of one – a book about telescopes and a book about the sky. This volume is the latter.

While I was writing the two books, Scott Roberts of Meade Instruments lent me equipment to try out. The technical support departments at Meade, Celestron, Software Bisque, and Starry Night Software answered technical questions. Daniel Bisque supplied software for testing. Howard Lester, Dennis Persyk, Lenny Abbey, Rich Jakiel, T. Wesley Erickson, Robert Leyland, R. A. Greiner, Richard Seymour, Ralph Pass, Phil Chambers, Ells Dutton, Michael Forsyth, and John Barnes critiqued drafts of parts of the text. Tom Sanford let me try out his Meade LX90 at length. Earlier, Jim Dillard first got me interested in computer-aided astronomy by buying my old Meade LX3 from me and outfitting it with digital setting circles. There are probably others whose names I've forgotten to list, and I beg their indulgence.