This textbook gives an outline of the tools and methods of radio astronomy needed by students and astronomers who want to understand how to carry out observations and how to relate the data to physical processes in interstellar space. It gives a unified treatment of the entire field of radio astronomy from centimetre to sub-millimetre wavelengths, using single telescopes as well as interferometers. The first half of the text covers instrumentation and observational techniques, the second covers most of the principal areas of astronomical research emphasizing fundamental results. For the third edition, the text has additional sections on new receiver techniques, such as hot electron bolometers and chirp transform spectrometers. A section on pulsar astronomy has also been included.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
From the reviews of previous editions:
"Nowadays Rohlfs and Wilson`s Tools of Radio Astronomy is the inevitable reference book. This is the one book you should buy if you want to become a radio astronomer. (...) I have used the first and second editions as a postgraduate textbook for many years, and will now recommend the third edition to my students."
The Observatory, 2001
"An excellent survey of the tools a radio astronomer needs to pursue the trade... The neatly encapsulated derivations of many classical relations will make the book useful to lecturer and student and practicing astronomer alike."
American Scientist
"People use this book so much because it describes what one needs in order to actually do radio astronomy... This book is an excellent graduate level text - the best available by far. It is also the best reference book for praticising astronomers who want to do radio astronomy properly, to interpret jargon or to understand some of the details of the literature."
Physics Today, 1998
From the reviews of the fourth edition:
"The 4th edition of this excellent and widely used textbook on the methods of radio astronomy has again been expanded and updated. . In its revised form the book has now grown beyond just a graduate textbook, so that many astronomers will dip into its pages to learn or re-acquaint themselves with the tools. . This 4th edition still holds its own between a comprehensive introduction and a reference tool and will readily displace the previous edition from the bookshelf." (J. R. Walsh and L. Walsh, Radiation and Environmental Biophysics, Vol. 43 (2), 2004)
"This is the fourth edition of what has become a classic textbook on radio astronomy. . It is probably still the best single textbook on the subject . . In my review of the third edition . I noted that 'the book is best if you want to make single-telescopic measurements of galactic objects', and that is still the case. For the fourth edition the book has been substantially revised and updated . ." (Jim Cohen, The Observatory, Vol. 124 (1183), December, 2004)
