Seeing in the Dark : : how Amateur Astronomers are Discovering the Wonders of the Universe

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	520 Fe	4-week checkout	Due 05-01-2024
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	520 Fe	4-week checkout	Due 05-21-2024

Includes bibliographical references and index.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

A pretty deep dive submitted by Susan4Pax -prev. sueij- on July 31, 2021, 10:02pm White men write a certain kind of science book really, really well. This isn’t a slam; it’s a perspective and an observation.

Here’s what’s great about this book: It’s thorough; There is no part of the sky that doesn’t get discussed. The author includes both people who are curious about astronomy and information about the science of the sky itself. I liked the alternating chapters and juxtaposition between practitioners and practice. In the early chapters especially, Ferris does a great job of breaking things down to an amateur’s level (later, too, but the science itself gets much more complex).

So what does being a White male author have to do with it? Unless White men are very deliberate about it, they write science (especially, though really every other field, too) from the perspective of a Western European lens. It’s a legitimate worldview, but not the only one. I understand that contemporary astronomy is going to reference this kind of science, but when talking about early skywatching eras, why was there nothing about China? Why were the North American Indigenous constellations not discussed? There was literally a moment when Ferris quoted a European about weather prediction based on the sky, and then said how it was true for him where he was in California, completely missing that Indigenous people would also certainly have had ways of predicting long winters as well. (Robin Wall Kimmerer did a great job as a Western-trained scientist writing a science book from her perspective as an Indigenous woman, if you want an example of what non-European science can look like.)

Ultimately, the book turned into more and more of a challenge to read as Ferris got into deeper and deeper space. I found the information to be very abstract and hard to wrap my head around, which probably isn’t about his writing, but about the information itself.

In the end, while this is a book for amateurs, it is a book for people who want a very deep dive into the state of amateur astronomy. It was interesting, but required a pretty solid science-reading background and a lot of focus. 3.5/5 stars