Comets, cosmology and the Big Bang : a history of astronomy from Edmond Halley to Edwin Hubble 1700-2000 / Allan Chapman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Chapman, Allan, 1946- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Astronomy--History.

Astronomy.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (576 pages) : illustrations

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford, England : Lion, 2018.

Summary:

This book will take the story of astronomy on from where Allan Chapman left it in Stargazers, and bring it almost up to date, with the developments and discoveries of the last three centuries. He covers the big names - Halley, Hooke, Herschel, Hubble and Hoyle; and includes the women who pushed astronomy forward, from Caroline Herschel to the Victorian women astronomers. He includes the big discoveries and the huge ideas, from the Milky War, to the Big Bang, the mighty atom, and the question of life on other planets. And he brings in the contributions made in the US, culminating in their race with the USSR to get a man on the moon, before turning to the explosion of interest in astronomy that was pioneered by Sir Patrick Moore and The Sky at Night.

Contents:

1. From the beginning to 1700 : the origins of astronomy

2. Cosmology begins at home: Captain Edmond Halley, FRS, RN, astronomer, geophysicist, and adventurer

3. Could a comet have caused Noah's flood?– 4. "Let there be more light." How telescope technology became the arbiter in cosmological

5. The rector and the organist: gravity, star clusters, and the origins of the Milky Way

6. William and Caroline Herschel fathom the "Construction of the heavens" from an English country garden – 7. Measuring the heavens and the earth in eighteenth-century Europe. Part 1: In pursuit of Venus: astronomy’s first great international adventure – 8. Measuring the heavens and the earth in eighteenth-century Europe. Part 2: Pendulums, planets, and gravity: creating the science of geodesy – 9. Cosmology and the Romantic age – 10. Sir John Herschel: the universal philosopher of the age – 11. There must be somebody out there! – 12. Mary Somerville: mathematician, astronomer, and gifted science communicator – 13. Sir George Biddell Airy of Greenwich: astronomer royal to the British empire – 14. Barristers, brewers, peers, and engineers: paying for astronomical research: the British “Grand amateur” tradition – 15. The camera does not lie: the birth of astronomical photography – 16. Unweaving the rainbow. Part 1: Sunlight, sunspot cycles, and magnetic storms – 17. Unweaving the rainbow. Part 2: Cosmologists and Catholic priest pioneers of astrophysics – 18. The Revd Thomas William Webb and the birth of “Popular astronomy” – 19. “Ladies of the night”: the astronomical women in Great Britain and America – 20. Astronomy for the masses in the Victorian age and early twentieth century – 21. Under new world skies: the great American observatories – 22. On the eve of the watershed: astronomy and cosmology c. 1890-1920 – 23. It’s all relative. The “Alice in Wonderland” world of early twentieth-century physics – 24. Crossing the watershed: Edwin Hubble, the celebrity astronomer of the galaxies – 25. The Belgian priest—cosmologist and the “cosmic egg” – 26. Sir Bernard Lovell and the “radio universe” – 27. “Fly me to the moon”: the birth of the space age – 28. A universe for the people: Sir Patrick Moore and the new amateur astronomy – 29. Postscript: creation revisited: where do we stand today?

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from digital title page (EBSCO, viewed on August 4, 2020).

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780745980300

0745980309