I know I've been prattling on about writing a book forever, but I think I might have finally found a topic that makes sense.
I was looking at my Astronomy notes and noticed that there is a lot of cool stuff there that people ought to know. In a typical astronomy book you get a lot of pictures of things in space (that you'll never see in your backyard telescope, by the way) and charts of the constellations. That's all great, but there is more to Astronomy than star-gazing. Astronomy is a science.
In my Astronomy class, we've been learning a lot about the science of Astronomy. We have not learned, for instance, how far away the Earth is from any particular star. This is something you can pull from any astronomy text. But what we have learned is how to determine the our distance from one, whether that star is moving closer or farther away, and what direction it is spinning, all based on what we know of the pinprick of light that bleeds through our atmosphere.
This kind of practical scientific knowledge gives us a foundation for what astronomers know about our universe. I think that if I could produce a book that brought this information to the layman, it would be interesting and well-received.
Wouldn't you want to read such a book? Want to edit?
I recall a great deal of the interesting science portion of astronomy from a class I took as a senior in High School. I recall the red shift phenomena that lets us know how far a star is and whether it is moving toward or away from us. There is also the spectrometer that allows us to determine the content of the body itself—what elements and compounds are being fused and created. There is also the act of using closer stars as lenses to see farther objects due to the bending and focusing of light.
A great deal of this type of information is conveyed in snippets in magazines such as Discover, Smithsonian, Astronomy and several of the other science rags. Although I’m not sure that a compilation of the science portions exist in layman’s terms. It would be an interesting book for the geeks to read, but I don’t expect many people to put down their latest Harry Potter or Danielle Steele to read it.
I would also edit.
Giving away my whole first chapter I see...
I doubt that anyone is going to get all fired up about a new astronomy book, but I have noticed a trend among friends for watching the Discovery Channel. It's odd to have blue collar buddies riff intellectual on the properties of quasars. This sort of thing seems to be happening to me more often recently. If anything, my book will make their stack of bathroom reading keepers.
I want to produce for the science of astronomy what HA Rey did for star gazing. A tough job, but that says it pretty succintly, I think.
Hi! I loved what you wrote about astronomy being much more than just star gazing. I'm blind, and astronomy is one of my greatest passions. I couldn't make it my profession but I took 2 basic astronomy classes and I've learned a whole lot.
And BTW, about another post you wrote, many scientists seem to think that science and God can't go together. But actually, I feel that the facts I learn from astronomy are those that bring me closer to God.
Take Care
Fran