Starlight Detectives - How Astronomers, Inventors, and Eccentrics Discovered the Modern Universe

A wondrous tale of cosmic exploration and the colorful characters who ushered astronomy into the modern age

List of contents

Introduction

Prologue

Part I: Picturing the Heavens
1. Writing with Light
2. True Eye and Faithful Hand
3. The Ingenious Mechanic of Dorchester
4. Summits of Silver
5. The Man with the Oil-Can
6. The Evangelists
7. The Aristocrat and the Artisan
8. Passion is Good, Obsession is Better
9. From Closet to Cosmos
10. Leaves of Glass
11. The Grandest Failure
12. An Uncivil War

Part II: Seeing the Light
13. The Odd Couple
14. What?s My Line?
15. Laboratory of Light
16. Deconstructing the Sun
17. A Strange Cryptography
18. Trumpets and Telescopes
19. Burn This Note
20. A Spectacle of Suns
21. The Cloud That Wasn?t There
22. The Union of Two Astronomies

Part III: Money, Mirrors, and Madness
23. Mr. Hale of Chicago
24. The Universe in the Mirror
25. Threads to a Web

Part IV: Expanding Horizons
26. Size Matters
27. A Night to Remember
28. Oculis subjecta fidelibus

Appendix

Notes

Bibliography

Acknowledgements

Index

About the author

Alan Hirshfeld, Professor of Physics at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and an Associate of the Harvard College Observatory, received his undergraduate degree in astrophysics from Princeton and his Ph.D. in astronomy from Yale. He is the author of Parallax: The Race to Measure the Cosmos, The Electric Life of Michael Faraday, and Eureka Man: The Life and Legacy of Archimedes. He is a regular book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal and has contributed to Sky & Telescope, the American Journal of Physics, BBC History Magazine, and American Scientist. He has made radio and television appearances on NPR, PBS, and C-SPAN and lectures nationwide about science history and discovery.

Product details

• Authors: Alan Hirshfeld
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 24.07.2014
• EAN: 9781934137789
• ISBN: 978-1-934137-78-9
• Weight: 524 g
• Illustrations: Illustrationen, nicht spezifiziert
• Subjects: Natural sciences, medicine, IT, technology > Natural sciences (general); SCIENCE / History, TECHNOLOGY & ENGINEERING / History, NATURE / Sky Observation, History of Science, History of engineering and technology, History of engineering & technology, Astronomy, space & time, Popular astronomy & space, Popular astronomy and space, Astronomy, space and time, SCIENCE / Space Science / Astronomy