The Astrogator's Handbook

by Michael McCollum

An astronomy book with a difference. We don't show you where the stars are in the night sky of Earth. We show you where they are with respect to one another. View local space from the vantage point of Polaris, the North Star, and plot your starships' courses with confidence

Paperback

First published January 1, 1998

About the author

Michael McCollum was born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1946, and is a graduate of Arizona State University, where he majored in aerospace propulsion and minored in nuclear engineering. He is employed at Honeywell in Tempe, Arizona, where he is Chief Engineer in the valve product line. In his career, Mr. McCollum has worked on the precursor to the Space Shuttle Main Engine, a nuclear valve to replace the one that failed at Three Mile Island, several guided missiles, Space Station Freedom, and virtually every aircraft in production today. He is currently involved in an effort to create a joint venture company with a major Russian aerospace engine manufacturer and has traveled extensively to Russia in the last several years. In addition to his engineering, Mr. McCollum is a successful professional writer in the field of science fiction. He is the author of a dozen pieces of short fiction and has appeared in magazines such as Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Amazing, and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Mr. McCollum is married to a lovely lady named Catherine, and has three children: Robert, Michael, and Elizabeth.

Reviews

[Scott Rhine · Rating 3 out of 5]

A great resource for a science fiction writer, showing stars in Cartesian coordinates for plotting starship courses, instead of spherical Earth centric. Much easier than doing the right ascension conversion myself. However, this was done in 1998 and not updated since. There are a lot of holes. Case in point, of the 12 nearest habitable planets from NASA's list, I found 3, had to manually match up 2 by doing the trig myself, and two stars were missing. The next five were just barely out of range for the free version. He gives the common name (like Kapteyn's Star) less than half the time, so matching can be hard.
The paid version of the book may have been updated more recently, but the latest copyright is still 2000. If you get the free version, be sure to print black and white only because his color ads can use up ink.