The Victorian Amateur Astronomer
The Victorian Amateur Astronomer

Author: Allan Chapman

Publisher:

Published: 1998

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13:

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This is the first book to look in detail at amateur astronomy in Victorian Britain. It deals with the technical issues that were active in Victorian astronomy, and reviews the problems of finance, patronage and the dissemination of scientific ideas. It also examines the relationship between the amateur and professional in Britain. It contains a wealth of previously unpublished biographical and anecdotal material, and an extended bibliography with notes incorporating much new scholarship. In The Victorian Amateur Astronomer, Allan Chapman shows that while on the continent astronomical research was lavishly supported by the state, in Britain such research was paid for out of the pockets of highly educated, wealthy gentlemen ? the so-called ?Grand Amateurs?. It was these powerful individuals who commissioned the telescopes, built the observatories, ran the learned societies, and often stole discoveries from their state-employed colleagues abroad. In addition to the ?Grand Amateurs?, Victorian Britain also contained many self-taught amateurs. Although they belonged to no learned societies, these people provide a barometer of the popularity of astronomy in that age. In the late 19th century, the comfortable middle classes ? clergymen, lawyers, physicians and retired military officers ? took to astronomy as a serious hobby. They formed societies which focused on observation, lectures and discussions, and it was through this medium that women first came to play a significant role in British astronomy. Readership: Undergraduate and postgraduate students studying the history of science or humanities, professional historians of science, engineering and technology, particularly those with an interest in astronomy, the development of astronomical ideas, scientific instrument makers, and amateur astronomers.

Kew Observatory and the Evolution of Victorian Science, 1840–1910
Kew Observatory and the Evolution of Victorian Science, 1840–1910

Author: Lee T. Macdonald

Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press

Published: 2018-06-05

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 0822983494

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Kew Observatory was originally built in 1769 for King George III, a keen amateur astronomer, so that he could observe the transit of Venus. By the mid-nineteenth century, it was a world-leading center for four major sciences: geomagnetism, meteorology, solar physics, and standardization. Long before government cutbacks forced its closure in 1980, the observatory was run by both major bodies responsible for the management of science in Britain: first the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and then, from 1871, the Royal Society. Kew Observatory influenced and was influenced by many of the larger developments in the physical sciences during the second half of the nineteenth century, while many of the major figures involved were in some way affiliated with Kew. Lee T. Macdonald explores the extraordinary story of this important scientific institution as it rose to prominence during the Victorian era. His book offers fresh new insights into key historical issues in nineteenth-century science: the patronage of science; relations between science and government; the evolution of the observatory sciences; and the origins and early years of the National Physical Laboratory, once an extension of Kew and now the largest applied physics organization in the United Kingdom.

Victorian Amateur Astronomer
Victorian Amateur Astronomer

Author: Allan Chapman

Publisher:

Published: 2017-11-27

Total Pages: 454

ISBN-13: 9781781820100

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This is the first book to look in detail at amateur astronomy in Victorian Britain. It deals with the technical issues that were active in Victorian astronomy, and reviews the problems of finance, patronage and the dissemination of scientific ideas, including the relationship between the amateur and the professional in Britain. It contains a wealth of previously unpublished biographical and anecdotal material, and an extended bibliography with notes incorporating much new scholarship. This long-awaited new edition of the Victorian Amateur Astronomer brings Allan Chapman's ground-breaking research on the role of the amateur in the development of astronomy to a new generation. He shows that while on the Continent astronomical research was lavishly supported by the state, in Britain such research was paid for out of the pockets of highly educated, wealthy gentlemen - the so-called 'Grand Amateurs'. It was these powerful individuals who commissioned the telescopes, built the observatories, ran the learned societies, and often stole discoveries from their state-employed colleagues abroad. In addition to the 'Grand Amateurs', Victorian Britain also contained many self-taught amateurs. Although they belonged to no learned societies, these people provide a barometer of the popularity of astronomy in that age. In the late 19th century, the comfortable middle classes - clergymen, lawyers, physicians and retired military officers - took to astronomy as a serious hobby. They formed societies which focused on observation, lectures and discussion, and it was through this medium that women first came to play a significant role in British astronomy. Readership: Undergraduate and postgraduate students studying the history of science or humanities, professional historians of science, engineering and technology, particularly those with an interest in astronomy, the development of astronomical ideas, and scientific instrument-makers, and amateur astronomers. Allan Chapman is a graduate of the University of Lancaster, and he received his D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. He holds three honorary doctorates from British universities, and was the 2015 Jackson-Gwilt Medallist of the Royal Astronomical Society. He is the author of eleven other books on the history of science and around 200 articles in international academic journals. He teaches in the Faculty of History at Oxford University, is a Member of

Dante and the Early Astronomer
Dante and the Early Astronomer

Author: Tracy Daugherty

Publisher: Yale University Press

Published: 2019-04-23

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0300244975

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Explore the evolution of astronomy from Dante to Einstein, as seen through the eyes of trailblazing Victorian astronomer Mary Acworth Evershed In 1910, Mary Acworth Evershed (1867–1949) sat on a hill in southern India staring at the moon as she grappled with apparent mistakes in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Was Dante’s astronomy unintelligible? Or was he, for a man of his time and place, as insightful as one could be about the sky? As the twentieth century began, women who wished to become professional astronomers faced difficult cultural barriers, but Evershed joined the British Astronomical Association and, from an Indian observatory, became an experienced observer of sunspots, solar eclipses, and variable stars. From the perspective of one remarkable amateur astronomer, readers will see how ideas developed during Galileo’s time evolved or were discarded in Newtonian conceptions of the cosmos and then recast in Einstein’s theories. The result is a book about the history of science but also a poetic meditation on literature, science, and the evolution of ideas.

The Astronomer's Chair
The Astronomer's Chair

Author: Omar W. Nasim

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-09-21

Total Pages: 311

ISBN-13: 0262362538

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The astronomer’s observing chair as both image and object, and the story it tells about a particular kind of science and a particular view of history. The astronomer’s chair is a leitmotif in the history of astronomy, appearing in hundreds of drawings, prints, and photographs from a variety of sources. Nineteenth-century stargazers in particular seemed eager to display their observing chairs—task-specific, often mechanically adjustable observatory furniture designed for use in conjunction with telescopes. But what message did they mean to send with these images? In The Astronomer’s Chair, Omar W. Nasim considers these specialized chairs as both image and object, offering an original framework for linking visual and material cultures. Observing chairs, Nasim ingeniously argues, showcased and embodied forms of scientific labor, personae, and bodily practice that appealed to bourgeois sensibilities. Viewing image and object as connected parts of moral, epistemic, and visual economies of empire, Nasim shows that nineteenth-century science was represented in terms of comfort and energy, and that “manly” postures of Western astronomers at work in specialized chairs were contrasted pointedly with images of “effete” and cross-legged “Oriental” astronomers. Extending his historical analysis into the twentieth century, Nasim reexamines what he argues to be a famous descendant of the astronomer’s chair: Freud’s psychoanalytic couch, which directed observations not outward toward the stars but inward toward the stratified universe of the psyche. But whether in conjunction with the mind or the heavens, the observing chair was a point of entry designed for specialists that also portrayed widely held assumptions about who merited epistemic access to these realms in the first place. With more than 100 illustrations, many in color; flexibound.

Choosing and Using a Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope
Choosing and Using a Schmidt-Cassegrain Telescope

Author: Rod Mollise

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1447102274

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Amateur astronomy is becoming increasingly popular, mostly because of the availability of relatively low-cost astronomical telescopes such as the Schmidt-Cassegrain and Maksutovs. The author describes what these instruments will do, how to use them, and which are the best - he draws on 25-years of experience with telescopes. There are sections on accessories, observing techniques, and hints and tips on: cleaning, collimating, maintaining the telescope, mounting, using the telescope in various conditions, computer control, and imaging (wet, digital and CCD). This is the perfect book for amateur astronomers who are about to invest in a new Schmidt-Cassegrain or Maksutov telescope, or for those who already have one and want to get the most out of it.

An Anthology of Visual Double Stars
An Anthology of Visual Double Stars

Author: Bob Argyle

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-08-29

Total Pages: 968

ISBN-13: 1108601707

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Modern telescopes of even modest aperture can show thousands of double stars. Many are faint and unremarkable but hundreds are worth searching out. Veteran double-star observer Bob Argyle and his co-authors take a close-up look at their selection of 175 of the night sky's most interesting double and multiple stars. The history of each system is laid out from the original discovery to what we know at the present time about the stars. Wide-field finder charts are presented for each system along with plots of the apparent orbits and predicted future positions for the orbital systems. Recent measurements of each system are included which will help you to decide whether they can be seen in your telescope, as well as giving advice on the aperture needed. Double star observers of all levels of experience will treasure the level of detail in this guide to these jewels of the night sky.

Cataclysmic Cosmic Events and How to Observe Them
Cataclysmic Cosmic Events and How to Observe Them

Author: Martin Mobberley

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2009-03-01

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 038779946X

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In the Victorian era – or for non-British readers, the mid-to-late nineteenth century – amateur astronomy tended to center on Solar System objects. The Moon and planets, as well as bright comets, were the key objects of interest. The brighter variable stars were monitored, but photography was in its infancy and digital imaging lay a century in the future. Today, at the start of the twenty-first century, amateurs are better equipped than any professionals of the mid-twentieth century, let alone the nineteenth. An amateur equipped with a 30-cm telescope and a CCD camera can easily image objects below magnitude 20 and, from very dark sites, 22 or 23. Such limits would have been within the realm of the 100- and 200-inch reflectors on Mount Wilson and Mount Palomar in the 1950s, but no other observatories. However, even those telescopes took hours to reach such limits, and then the photographic plates had to be developed, fixed, and examined by eye. In the modern era digital images can be obtained in minutes and analyzed ‘on the fly’ while more images are being downloaded. Developments can be e-mailed to other interested amateurs in real time, during an observing session, so that when a cataclysmic event takes place amateurs worldwide know about it. As recently as the 1980s, even professional astronomers could only dream of such instantaneous communication and proc- sing ability.

The Sun Kings
The Sun Kings

Author: Stuart Clark

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-04-12

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 0691141266

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Recounts the story behind English astronomer Richard Carrington's observations of a mysterious explosion on the surface of the sun and how his understanding that the sun's magnetism directly influences the Earth helped usher in the modern era of astronomy.