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Astrophysical Techniques, Sixth Edition, C.R. Kitchin, Florida USA, CRC Press, 2013,
pp.xviii+536, £38.99 (Hardback), ISBN: 978-1-4665-1115-6.
Scope and level: Textbook, suitable for both undergraduates and postgraduates, and also for
advanced amateur astronomers and professional astronomers.
Review by Dr Robert C Smith, Emeritus Reader, Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH; r.c.smith@sussex.ac.uk
The pioneers of photographic astronomy in the 19th century needed to be very familiar with
their detectors and how they worked in order to get useful (or in some cases any!) results,
and that remained largely true as long as photographic emulsion and (later) single-channel
photometers were the primary detectors. With the advent of CCD detectors and their
relatives, that has become less true, and it has become possible to obtain satisfactory results
without understanding much of how a CCD works. However, in order to get the best possible
observational results it is still true that it pays to know as much as possible, both about the
process of obtaining the raw data and about the most effective way to reduce and analyse
the data. A deep understanding of the detector helps with both tasks, and for thirty years this
book has been on hand to guide the beginner into that understanding by explaining the
physical principles.
Since the first edition in 1984, there have been many developments in detector technology
and other instrumentation, and the various revised editions have been written to keep up with
those developments. However, the level remains aimed at the physics undergraduate,
although the detail included also makes it useful for beginning graduate students. Many of
the more descriptive passages will also be appreciated by a much larger audience, including
in particular the serious amateur astronomer. There is much here too for the professional
astronomer who is not directly involved in detector development but wants to keep abreast of
developments. A new feature of this edition is a fascinating short essay (pp.63-72) on the
history of the telescope. Interestingly, telescopes are counted as detectors, on the correct
basis that all observation involves both a detector and a device for focusing the radiation
onto it, plus on many occasions an analyser, such as a spectrograph or polarimeter. The eye
is an integrated system of that kind, and conceptually a telescope and its analysers and
detectors also form an integrated system which should be optimized as a whole.
Detectors are the main focus, and occupy the whole of the first chapter, which at 220 pages
makes up more than a third of the book. However, other topics are by no means neglected,
with imaging, photometry and spectroscopy given a chapter each and a range of other
techniques, such as polarimetry, covered in the final chapter. The other main focus remains,
as it was in the first edition, on the wavelength range from the ultraviolet to the infrared
(about 10 nm to 100 μm), with the imaging and spectroscopy chapters dealing only with
those wavelengths. This was probably essential to keep the book at a reasonable size, and
may still represent the majority of astronomical observations, but it does mean that, for
example, the reader with a particular interest in understanding radio astronomy will receive a
rather less detailed introduction to the subject. Nonetheless, most wavelength regions do
receive serious attention, with non-electromagnetic radiation also being covered (cosmic
rays, neutrinos, gravitational radiation and even dark matter and dark energy). Slightly
annoyingly, gravitational waves are still referred to (even in the index of this edition) as
gravity waves, a completely different phenomenon (as Kitchin does recognise in a footnote).
However, that is a very minor criticism of what remains an extremely useful and informative
review of all the multitude of techniques and instruments used in modern astrophysics. It is
clearly written, well illustrated, and has some useful appendices and a detailed 34-page
index. This book has become a classic text and the sixth edition is strongly recommended.
