Modern Astrometry

J. Kovalevsky

Springer-Verlag, 1995 – ISBN 3-540-57023-3 – pp.xiv + 352 – DM 98.00 (hardback)

Reviewed by N.D. James : Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 105 (4), 187 (1995)

The process of making accurate measurements of celestial positions is called astrometry. This is one of those areas of astronomy which is sometimes thought to be rather boring, but, as Kovalevsky points out in this book, astrometry has now come into the modern age.

Modern Astrometry is not quite what I expected. Although amateurs have moved into the modern age with the deployment of computers and CCDs, we are usually happy if our positions have an absolute accuracy of 0.5 arcseconds or so. We can measure more accurately than this, but catalogue positions fail us. Kovalevsky’s book is not really concerned with Solar System astrometry to this order of accuracy. It is more directed towards astrophysical studies of galactic objects, where positions are required to milliarcsecond accuracy. The coverage is comprehensive, covering all aspects from atmospheric seeing, through image formation to final reduction.

The book is definitely intended for the professional astronomer; it is highly technical and full of equations. I cannot admit to checking all of these; in fact, I gave up after the first error was found on page 14! There is not really very much of direct relevance to the amateur astrometrist here. I found the discussion of point-spread functions and centroid fitting to be useful, but much of the rest of the book was really only of academic interest. There is good coverage of the techniques used by the Hipparcos satellite and the Hubble Space Telescope, and some suggestions of areas where future efforts can be directed.

Whilst I do not think that this book will be of much use to amateur astronomers, it is a very comprehensive survey which will be of value to professionals.