A collection of scientific papers and research articles relating to astronomy and astrophysics, published monthly by the Royal Astronomical Society. This journal provides valuable insights into the latest developments in the field of astronomy and serves as an essential resource for professional astronomers. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
You too can follow in the steps of the great astronomers such as Hipparchus, Galileo, Kepler and Hubble, who all contributed so much to our modern understanding of the cosmos. This book gives the student or amateur astronomer the following tools to replicate some of these seminal observations from their own homes: With your own eyes: Use your own observations and measurements to discover and confirm the phenomena of the seasons, the analemma and the equation of time, the logic behind celestial coordinates, and even the precession of the equinoxes. With a consumer-grade digital camera: Record the changing brightness of an eclipsing binary star and show that a pulsating star changes color as it brightens and dims. Add an inexpensive diffraction grating to your camera and see the variety of spectral features in the stars, and demonstrate that the Sun’s spectrum is similar to one particular type of stellar spectrum. With a backyard telescope: Add a CCD imager and you can measure the scale of the Solar System and the distance to a nearby star. You could even measure the distance to another galaxy and observe the cosmological redshift of the expanding universe. Astronomical Discoveries You Can Make, Too! doesn’t just tell you about the development of astronomy; it shows you how to discover for yourself the essential features of the universe.
'Catchers of the Light' is a History of Astrophotography. It tells the true stories of the 46 pioneers who did most to master the art of celestial photography, as it was known during its early days; and whose efforts have made it possible for us to see the many magnificent pictures of the Universe featured in books, magazines and on the internet. In its TWO magnificent volumes is contained an unbelievable collection of tales of adventure, adversity and ultimate triumph and tells the uplifting stories of this small band of ordinary men and women, who did such extraordinary things; overcoming obstacles as diverse as war, poverty, cholera, death, very unfriendly cannibal natives and even exploding donkeys. It has been written with a no specific audience in mind - it is a book for anybody in fact - astronomers, photographers, historians, genealogists, art dealers, students, artists, doctors, farmers, builders, teachers & many more. If you like to read about the lives of special people - those who never give up - no matter what - and who succeed in achieving the seemingly impossible - then this is the book for you. This book of 1600 or so pages, with 1800 or more photographs/illustrations and over 2000 references/notes - represents the FIRST fully detailed and professionally researched book on the subject; and tells of the incredible lives of the pioneers of Astrophotography, each with their own incredible story to tell - they were the ‘Catchers of the Light’. Catchers of the Light is divided into ten Parts (I-X), each covering a specific aspect of the subject- I: Origins of Astrophotography; II: Lunar Astrophotography; III: Solar Astrophotography; IV: Solar System Astrophography; V: Deep Space Astrophotography; VI: Photographic Astronomical Spectroscopy; VII: Photographic Sky Surveys; VIII: Astrographs; IX: Modern Digital Age; X: Appendices. The following men and women are to be found in the pages of the book; who are the 'Catchers of the Light': Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (1787-1851); Joseph Nicephore Niepce (1765-1833); Frederick Scott Archer (1814-1857); Richard Leach Maddox (1816-1902); John William Draper (1811-1882); Maurice Loewy (1833-1907); Pierre Henri Puiseux (1855-1928); William Henry Pickering (1858-1938); Armand Hippolyte Leon Fizeau (1819-1896); Jean Bernard Leon Foucault (1819-1868); Warren De La Rue (1815-1889); Pierre Jules Cesar Janssen (1824-1907); John Adams Whipple (1822-1891); William Usherwood (1821-1915); Pierre Paul Henry (1848-1905); Mathieu Prosper Henry (1849-1903); Maximillian Franz Joseph Cornelius Wolf (1863-1932); William Cranch Bond (1789-1859); George Phillips Bond (1825 -1865); Benjamin Apthorp Gould (1824-1896); Henry Draper (1837-1882); Isaac Roberts (1829-1904); William Edward Wilson (1851-1908); James Edward Keeler (1857-1900); Edward Emerson Barnard (1857-1923); Williamina Paton Strevens Fleming (1857-1911); Lewis Morris Rutherfurd (1816-1892); Father Pietro Angelo Secchi (1818-1878); William Huggins (1824-1910); Margaret Lindsay Murray (1848-1915); Edward Charles Pickering (1846 - 1919); Hermann Vogel (1841-1907); Wilhelm Oswald Lohse (1845-1915); Julius Scheiner (1858-1913); Edwin Powell Hubble (1889-1953); Milton Lasell Humason (1891-1972); Amedee Ernest Barthelemy Mouchez (1821-1892); David Gill (1843-1914); William Parsons (1800-1867); Andrew Ainslie Common (1841-1903); George Willis Ritchey (1864 1945); Henri Chretien (1879-1956); Bernhard Voldemar Schmidt (1879-1935); . Eugen von Gothard (1857-1909); Alfred Rordame (1862-1931); Marcel De Kerolyr (1873-1969). If you have seen or read ‘Longitude’ the story of John Harrison, the country carpenter who built the first clock that could accurately tell the time at sea, and who also made ‘Del Boy’ a ‘millionaire’, then you will love the ‘Catchers of the Light’.
