James Muirden. Astronomy with Binoculars

This presentation is intended to be the first in a series that will include the most well-known and widespread books on binocular astronomy, or bino-astronomy if you prefer.

Since there aren't a great many books of this type, I won't hesitate to talk about books that have long since been off the shelves (but there is a used market).

On the other hand, it seems to me that lately the book distribution machine tends to almost work on sales: books published just a few years ago often disappear from shops and catalogues and end up in the limbo of the "unfindable".

So much so that, as a book buyer, I've started pretending I'm not going to the bookstore, but to the greengrocer: if I like a book, I buy it right away (since it might be gone in a month), just like one does with seasonal fruit.

Books, unlike fruit, have the great advantage of long shelf life, and reading can be distributed in the most convenient way.

But let's get to the book of this first appointment: it is "Astronomy through Binoculars" by James Muirden.

I have been able to examine two editions of this book: the 1977 Italian edition by Longanesi (kept in my association's library) and the first English edition from 1963, which I purchased second-hand.

 

 

The book covers: the one on the left was found on the web (my copy is cloth bound and the dust jacket is missing), the one on the right is a scan of the 1977 Longanesi edition

From the preface of the first edition (1963) we read that:

“Astronomy is a daunting science, and the beginner has to face two obstacles; first, the fact that everything is on a very large scale; and the lack of instrumentation.”

The author went on to say that with the beginning of the Space Age, astronomy was becoming more practical than it had been before, that ideas about the Universe were becoming increasingly more materialistic, and that the approach had become more direct and immediate.

Finally, a famous popular book from the 1920s, ’Astronomy With an Opera Glass,“ by GP Serviss, was cited: while this book was a simple presentation of the starry sky for the curious today, the author wrote, all those who look at the stars do so in the spirit of research and investigation.

And the aim of the book was precisely to enhance the value of binoculars in the field of astronomy, approached with this new practical and investigative attitude.

In the preface to the Italian edition, published 14 years later, the English amateur astronomer George Eric Deacon Alcock (1912-2000) is mentioned and thanked, among others, for discovering his first nova in 1967 (after the first edition, therefore), using binoculars.

Alcock is a legendary amateur astronomer, who discovered his fifth nova at the age of over 75, observing from inside a glassed-in veranda to avoid exposure to the cold of the night.
He spotted it with a pair of 10×70 binoculars held freehand, in the constellation Draco.

It didn't take him long because the nova was magnitude 5, and he knew the positions of all the stars up to magnitude 8 by heart. .

Among the illustrations included in the text, the 1963 edition includes a drawing of Comet Seki-Lines made in 1962 using 8×30 binoculars. The 1977 Italian edition includes the most recent observation of the famous Comet Kohoutek (one of the most overestimated comets) made in 1974 by GED Alcock using 15×80 binoculars.

 

 

 

The structure of the book (Italian edition) is as follows:

Chapter 1 – Binoculars and Telescopes

Chapter 2 – The Sun

Chapter 3 – The Moon

Chapter 4 – The Planets

Chapter 5 – Comets, Meteors, Auroras

Chapter 6 – Beyond the Solar System

Chapter 7 – The Constellations

Chapter 8 – Programs for Binocular Observers

This is followed by some appendices, one of which is the directory of Italian amateur astronomer associations.

 

Chapter 8 is definitely one of the most interesting, as it deals with "doing" astronomy: once you've purchased the instrument, learned the constellations, identified the planets, the time comes to get serious...

Observation and data recording techniques and advice are illustrated for:

• variable stars
• the hunt for novae stars
• the observation of meteors visible in telescopes

This chapter, that is, the “what to do next” is unfortunately absent in many popular astronomy books.

The problem is certainly not the lack of instrumentation, as Muirden complained in 1963: today, for modest sums, you can purchase instruments that surpass the wildest dreams of the average amateur astronomer of the 1960s.

Perhaps we no longer have that widespread practical spirit of knowledge and conquest of the Universe mentioned by Muirden: having mentally archived the space race as a chapter of the Cold War, few are now excited about probes to Mars or Neptune, and surely the landing of man on Mars would end up on page five after three days.

Be that as it may, I am very fond of this book by Muirden.

Partly for anagraphic reasons, because it talks about amateur astronomy precisely in the years when I myself became passionate about it.

Partly because it conveys that pleasantly ’old economy“ sense of having to acquire knowledge of the sky and observation techniques as a necessary step to satisfyingly reading the great book of the Universe.