Jane Clark – författare

Galaxies present a unique challenge to town dwellers. Amateur astronomers can''t use narrowband filters to shut out light pollution or use ordinary techniques as they would in dark, open fields. As one can imagine, this discrepancy with light means not everyone who looks up at the night sky is capable of seeing all it has to offer. What a shame!

Author Jane Clark, however, has spent two years going down blind alleys trying to get a technique to work to combat the amateur astronomer''s biggest enemy, light pollution. In this book, you will discover the fascinating variety of galaxies: spirals, ellipticals and irregular galaxies, often sculpted by gravity as they encounter one another in the vastness of space. You will also learn how to image them, as well! 

While the most decent images pick up background galaxies 10-20x as far, each containing billions of stars, that''s just the local universe! This book will help you observe for yourself right in your own backyard, allowing you to get a sense of the sheer vastness of the universe.

Viewing and Imaging the Solar System: A Guide for Amateur Astronomers is for those who want to develop their ability to observe and image Solar System objects, including the planets and moons, the Sun, and comets and asteroids. They might be beginners, or they may have already owned and used an astronomical telescope for a year or more.

Newcomers are almost always wowed by sights such as the rings of Saturn and the moons of Jupiter, but have little idea how to find these objects for themselves (with the obvious exceptions of the Sun and Moon). They also need guidance about what equipment, besides a telescope, they will need.

This book is written by an expert on the Solar System, who has had a lot of experience with outreach programs, which teach others how to make the most of relatively simple and low-cost equipment. That does not mean that this book is not for serious amateurs. On the contrary, it is designed to show amateur astronomers, in a relatively light-hearted—and math-free way—how to become serious.

This book shows readers how to calculate the orbit of Mars, based on their own observations and using observations made by the author. The historical, observational, and analytical aspects of the project to measure the orbit of Mars are all combined in this one book!

Determining the orbit of Mars is particularly important, as originally solving this problem required the founding of modern science. Clark discusses how people came to believe in the Newtonian model of the Solar System, works through the mathematical basis for the theory of gravity, and shows how Newton ruled out the possibility of alternative theories. Readers also learn how it became possible to accurately measure the positions of Mars from a moving, spinning platform—the Earth.

This mid-level observational challenge is well within reach of most serious amateur astronomers. For the observations, only a telescope with auto-guiding capability and the ability to mount a digital single lens reflex (DSLR) camera is required. For the calculations, it is assumed that the reader has a science, engineering, or mathematics background and is familiar with calculus, vectors, and trigonometry.

This dramatic, fast-paced memoir traces a woman''s search for a story to explain sudden losses she experienced as a young child, including her sister''s cancer death, her father''s disappearance, and her overnight move away from home, events that fractured her relationship with her mother and thrust her into a life-long pattern of abandonment and loss. Juggling professional success with unresolved grief, she follows a career path as a writer, journalist, professor, and spiritual director, traveling from West Texas to the plains of Spain, the forests of Pennsylvania, and the Alps in southern France trying to find a mysterious tale carried for generations in her family. Resisting the pull to either condemn or quickly forgive those who hurt her and avoiding the temptation to fall into the trap of spiritual bypassing, she chooses, instead, to follow the story''s call across thresholds of time and space, where she discovers a family legacy that illuminates the lives of all the women in her family. A universal story that speaks into the often-troubled relationship between mothers and daughters. Blending ancestral storytelling with spirituality and mystery, this is a memoir that will inspire the reader to believe in the power of story to transform the storyteller into a story carrier, where the magic of healing can begin.