Bøger i Historical & Cultural Astronomy serien

The invention of the telescope at the dawning of the 17th century has revolutionized humanity's understanding of the Universe and our place within it. This book traces the development of the telescope over four centuries, as well as the many personalities who used it to uncover brand-new revelations about the Sun, Moon, planets, stars and distant galaxies.Starting with early observers such as Thomas Harriot, Galileo, Johannes Hevelius, Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Robert Hooke and Christian Huygens, the book explores how these early observers arrived at essentially correct ideas concerning the objects they studied. Moving into the 18th and 19th centuries, the author describes the increasing sophistication of telescopes both large and small, and the celebrated figures who used them so productively, including the Herschels, Charles Messier, William Lassell and the Earls of Rosse.Many great discoveries were also made with smaller instruments when placed in the capable hands of the Struve dynasty, F.W. Bessel, Angelo Secchi and S.W Burnham, to name but a few. Nor were all great observers of professional ilk. The book explores the contributions made by the 'clerical astronomers,' William Rutter Dawes, Thomas William Webb, T.E.R Philips and T.H.E.C Espin, as well as the lonely vigils of E.E. Barnard, William F. Denning and Charles Grover. And in the 20th century, the work of Percival Lowell, Leslie Peltier, Eugene M. Antoniadi, Clyde Tombaugh, Walter Scott Houston, David H. Levy and Sir Patrick Moore is fully explored.Generously illustrated throughout, this treasure trove of astronomical history shows how each observer's work led to seminal developments in science, and providing key insights into how we go about exploring the heavens today.

This book is a sequel to Heaven and Earth in Ancient Greek Cosmology (Springer 2011). With the help of many pictures, the reader is introduced into the way of thinking of ancient believers in a flat earth. The last chapter shows that, inadvertently, ancient arguments and ideas return in the curious modern flat earth cosmologies.

This book explores the insights that Cultural Astronomy provides into the classical Roman world by unveiling the ways in which the Romans made use of their knowledge concerning the heavens, and by shedding new light on the interactions between astronomy and heritage in ancient Roman culture.

The margravial court astronomer Simon Marius, was involved in all of the new observations made with the recently invented telescope in the early part of the seventeenth century. He also discovered the Moons of Jupiter in January 1610, but lost the priority dispute with Galileo Galilei, because he missed to publish his findings in a timely manner.The history of astronomy neglected Marius for a long time, finding only the apologists for the Copernican system worthy of attention. In contrast the papers presented on the occasion of the Simon Marius Anniversary Conference 2014, and collected in this volume, demonstrate that it is just this struggle to find the correct astronomical system that makes him particularly interesting. His research into comets, sunspots, the Moons of Jupiter and the phases of Venus led him to abandon the Ptolemaic system and adopt the Tychonic one. He could not take the final step to heliocentricity but his rejection was based on empirical arguments of his time.This volume presents a translation of the main work of Marius and shows the current state of historical research on Marius.

Australia has a proud history of achievements in radio astronomy, and through the CSIRO Division of Radiophysics (and later the Australia Telescope National Facility) has been a world leader in radio astronomy since the end of World War II. This book covers the years from 1945 until 1961, when radio astronomy developed at a number of sites in New South Wales. Many amazing new discoveries were made by an outstanding group of young scientists, opening up the new science of radio astronomy "from the solar system to the cosmos."

This biography covers the life of Lewis Swift (1820-1913), who discovered 13 comets and nearly 1,200 other deep sky objects.

This book comprises a fascinating collection of contributions on the Merz telescopes in Italy that collectively offer the first survey on historical large refracting telescopes in the country, drawing on original documents and photographs.

This book examines the ways in which attitudes toward astronomy in Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan, Thailand and Uzbekistan have changed with the times.The emergence of astrophysics was a worldwide phenomenon during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it gradually replaced the older-style positional astronomy, which focused on locating and measuring the movements of the planets, stars, etc.. Here you will find national overviews that are at times followed by case studies of individual notable achievements. Although the emphasis is on the developments that occurred around 1900, later pioneering efforts in Australian, Chinese, Indian and Japanese radio astronomy are also included. As the first book ever published on the early development of astrophysics in Asia, the authors fill a chronological and technological void. Though others have already written about earlier astronomical developments in Asia, and about the recent history of astronomy in various Asian nations, no one has examined the emergence of astrophysics, the so-called ¿new astronomy¿ in Asia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

This book presents a modern scholarly analysis of issues associated with England's most famous astronomer, William Herschel. The popular subject of extraterrestrial life is looked at from the point of view of both William Herschel and his son John, both of whom had an interest in the topic.