Using SI units in astronomy

The target audience for a book on using SI units in astronomy has to be astronomers who teach and/or carry out astronomical research at universities and government observatories (national or local) or privately run observatories. If this group would willingly accept the advantages to be gained by all astronomers using the same set of units and proceed to lead by example, then it should follow that the next generation of astronomers would be taught using the one set of units. Since many of the writers of popular articles in astronomy have received training in the science, non-technical reviews might then also be written using the one set of units. Given the commitment and competence of today's amateur astronomers and the high-quality astronomical equipment they often possess, it follows that they too would want to use the one set of units when publishing the results of their research.

As to why one set of units should be used, a brief search through recent astronomical literature provides an answer. Consider the many different ways the emergent flux of electromagnetic radiation emitted by celestial bodies and reported in the papers listed below and published since the year 2000, is given.

1. Józsa et al. (2009) derived a brightness temperature of 4 × 105K for a faint central compact source in the galaxy IC2497 observed at a radio frequency of 1.65 GHz.[…]