The book
I am looking for a publisher: proposal and summary
The idea to write a book about the systematic and therefore computable effects of the atmosphere and the alignment of the hour axis came up during the period where I was looking for the basic scientific articles. These articles were written mainly in the years between 1879 and 1902 and since 1979. With the exception of the drift alignment method, introduced by Julius Scheiner in 1889, none of these ideas found the way into the astrophotography literature.
Telescopes, which can purchased today, have sub arc second resolution over the whole useful field and together with the photographs of the professional astronomers, e.g. of the Hubble Space Telescope, set the expectations high. Little known is the fact, that at a zenith distance of about 45o the star light is spread into a minute spectrum of 1.5 arc second length. That means the effect of dispersion is already comparable to the seeing. The refraction, which is in the simplest case observable as a zenith distance dependent compression of a given star field, is almost neglected, despite the resulting star trails appear on a celestial photographs similar to geometrical aberrations.
From my point of view the knowledge of the effects of the atmosphere and at least one precision alignment method of the hour axis are essential to every astrophotographer. Knowing how to align the hour axis with precision makes the setup period shorter and the result more reliable. The typical problems of a beginner disappear immediately, because the star trails are mainly a function of the position of the hour axis. In addition the interpretation of the star trails is easier in case one likes to correct some errors seen on a celestial photograph.
Figure
1: Preliminary title page. A click on it opens a PDF file with
the first two chapters and the contents in German. A summary is
provided in the proposal.
Because of these arguments I decided to write a manuscript in which this background is compiled and a astrophotographer finds detailed information how to setup the telescope for photographic purposes. A good theory is worth nothing if the description of the practical aspects promises little help. This is the reason why the setup of an equatorial mount stands bold in the center of this manuscript.
Comments, questions, corrections:markus.wildi@one-arcsec.org