Sky & Telescope June 1999 [antikvár]

The Hipparcos FirehoseDuring my first visit to Mount Wilson Observatory, in the late '50s, solar observer Tommy Cragg took me to its library. I remember being blovin away; this kid had never dreamed that so many astronomy books existed!One huge set was labeled "AGK2," and this cryptonym piqued my curiosity. Upon opening one of the tomes, I encountered an overwhelming array of numbers logging brightnesses and positions of stars. Only now do I appreciate how those thousands of celestial addresses focused my astronomical perspective. At some juvenile subconscious level I realized that, if the Zweiter Astronomische Gesellschafi Katalog already contained such a profusion of information about stars, there must be lots more to learn about them.Over a long weekend last summer I relived that epiphany as I dipped into Vols. 5-9 of the Hipparcos and Tycho Catalogues, the most modern descendant of the AGK2. Every time I passed the coffee table upon which these baedekers were piled, I just had to look up the biography of some favorite star or browse for oddballs. The books had been sent to me by Michael Ferryman, who gives a broad overview of Hipparcos's nifty results beginning on page 40. The Hipparcos legacy actually fills 17 hefty volumes containing thousands of pages plus a stack of CD-ROMs; the whole 66-pound shebang costs $400 from ESA's Publications Division (ESTEC, RO. Box 299, 2200 AG Noordwijk, The Netherlands). Or explanatory Vol. 1 and the CDs can be had for $100. Either way, these must be the best values in the history of astronomy.The volumes exude elegance, from the typography to the paper; Vol. 1 even features a bound-in, page-marking ribbon. (Yes, I'm describing a contemporary technical publication here!) This volume also contains many visual vignettes derived from the catalog's data, such as the one above. It nicely portrays the Milky Way's profile through star-number counts. William Herschel would be pleased!Vol. 12, containing hundreds of light curves of variable stars, could deprive an enthusiast of sleep forever. And, if Vol. 10 doesn't revive a passion for observing double stars, nothing ever will. In addition to precise Hipparcos measurements, the compiler, Hans Schrijver, included 12,000 sketches of these systems! Finally, many sections in the set, explaining how the data was reduced, could well be read by all advanced amateurs and nonspecialist professionals alike.P.S. What goes around comes around. At the turn of this century Europe's astronomers were preoccupied with the before-its-time, stupendous Carte du Ciel star-mapping project so much so that they missed the "Astrophysics Express" that was leaving the station. For most of the 20th century the U.S. rode that train like a hobo king. Now, because of Hipparcos, the Continent's astrometrists have sidetracked lots of astrophysics. Rather nice, I think. We need the action!