Chapter One
Why You Need This Book
"I can understand your wanting to write poems, but I don't quite
know what you mean by 'being a poet' ..."
T. S. Eliot
My wife, a liberal arts major in college, took a course in her
freshman year that she affectionately called Astronomy for Poets.
She learned basic astronomy, studied the constellations, and viewed
planets and stars for the first time through a telescope. Cool. She
loved the course and signed up for the second in the series in her
sophomore year.
Big mistake. The professor started the first class by announcing,
"Well, now that we're all here for something beyond fulfilling the
basic science requirement, we can get down to work." My wife's
reaction as she looked around the room was Uh oh. There were eight
students in the class six astronomy majors, one physics major, and
one political science major: her. Not good. The course covered
spherical trigonometry, sidereal time, parallax motion, optics, and
a lot of ot ...
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