Recent measurements of each system are included which will help you to decide whether they can be seen in your telescope, as well as giving advice on the aperture needed.
Wide-field finder charts are presented for each system along with plots of the apparent orbits and predicted future positions for the orbital systems. The history of each system is laid out from the original discovery to what we know at the present time about the stars. Veteran double-star observer Bob Argyle and his co-authors take a close-up look at their selection of 175 of the night sky's most interesting double and multiple stars.
Many are faint and unremarkable but hundreds are worth searching out. Modern telescopes of even modest aperture can show thousands of double stars. There is an extensive database of astrometric, double-and multiple-star formation, including positions, orbits, separations, and magnitudes, and a software suite that implements many of the calculations and equations featured in the book. The extra information includes the complete Washington Double Star and Tycho-2 Catalogs. The CD-ROM that accompanied the first edition of Observing and Measuring Visual Double Stars is replaced by access to the Springer Extras web site. Nearly all of the chapters and tables have been updated. In addition, there is information about how to image double stars of unequal brightness, always a difficult matter but now somewhat easier because of advances in hardware and image-processing software. The new edition contains an excellent guide to sketching double stars, a topic not previously covered. This includes the use of the Internet to carry out astrometry (precise astronomical measurement) using existing survey plates and films. This second edition of this popular book contains a significant amount of completely new material, inspired by the work done by observers – particularly in the USA – since the first edition was published. The astronomy of double stars, including orbital calculation, is given its own section. It deals with equipment (you can start modestly with commercial or even home-made instruments), observing methods using binoculars upwards to advanced instrumentation and techniques, including speckle interferometry. The second edition of Observing and Measuring Visual Double Stars (2004) is the definitive book for those who are serious about this fascinating aspect of astronomy. Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
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