- The scope of astronomy
- The techniques of astronomy
- Impact of astronomy
- History of astronomy
Roger A. Freedman and William J. Kaufman III, Universe, 7th ed. (2005); Michael Zeilik, Astronomy: The Evolving Universe, 9th ed. (2002); and Michael A. Seeds, Foundations of Astronomy, 9th ed. (2007), are introductory texts.
Guides and handbooks
Ian Ridpath (ed.), Norton’s Star Atlas and Reference Handbook, Epoch 2000.0, 20th ed. (2004), is a popular atlas with explanatory material. Stephen James O’Meara, The Messier Objects (also published as The Messier Objects Field Guide, 1998), provides a guide to the objects in this famous catalog. Martin Mobberley, The New Amateur Astronomer (2004), is a general guide to telescopes and observing. Listings of observational information are found in U.S. Naval Observatory Nautical Almanac Office and Great Britain Nautical Almanac Office, The Astronomical Almanac (annual); and Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, The Observer’s Handbook (annual). Kenneth R. Lang, A Companion to Astronomy and Astrophysics: Chronology and Glossary with Date Tables (2006), is a dictionary of technical terms, with names of scientists, values of astronomical quantities, and brief historical notes, and Astrophysical Formulae, 3rd ed. rev. and enlarged, 2 vol. (1999), is a comprehensive reference source with extensive formulas and background data. Arthur N. Cox (ed.), Allen’s Astrophysical Quantities, 4th ed. (2000), is a standard reference updated every few years.
Works dealing with forefront areas of research and directed to the nonspecialist include F.A. Aharonian, Very High Energy Cosmic Gamma Radiation (2004); Paul Halpern and Paul Wesson, Brave New Universe: Illuminating the Darkest Secrets of the Cosmos (2006); D.A. Lorimer and M. Kramer, Handbook of Pulsar Astronomy (2005); James B. Kaler, Extreme Stars: At the Edge of Creation (2001); A.C. Fabian, K.S. Pounds, and R.D. Blandford, Frontiers of X-ray Astronomy (2004); Andreas Eckart, Rainer Schödel, and Christian Straubmeier, The Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way (2005); and Simon Singh, Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe (2004).
Up-to-date reviews of specialized topics are found in the Annual Review of Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Their first chapters are often devoted to reminiscences by major scientists. Major professional journals include The Astronomical Journal (12 per year) and The Astrophysical Journal (3 per month), both published for the American Astronomical Society; the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (3 per month); and Astronomy and Astrophysics (4 per month), managed by the European Southern Observatory for a consortium of European astronomical societies. An excellent publication is Sky and Telescope (monthly), directed to the serious amateur astronomer and still of interest to the professional.
Two good surveys of the history of astronomy, covering the whole period from ancient to modern times, are (the more-readable) Michael Hoskin, The Cambridge Illustrated History of Astronomy (1997); and (the more-detailed) John North, Cosmos: An Illustrated History of Astronomy and Cosmology (2008), which includes a treatment of the history of cosmology (the history of theories about the universe as a whole, a subject sometimes considered to be separate from, although clearly related to, the history of astronomy). A good short account of the history of cosmology is Helge S. Kragh, Conceptions of Cosmos: From Myths to the Accelerating Universe (2007).
Prehistory and antiquity
Informative works on prehistoric astronomy are Clive Ruggles, Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland (1999); and John North, Stonehenge: Neolithic Man and the Cosmos (1996). A full study of the orientations of ancient tombs is Michael Hoskin, Temples, Tombs, and Their Orientations: A New Perspective on Mediterranean Prehistory (2001). An overview of the Western astronomical tradition from the Babylonians to the Renaissance, with emphasis on the techniques actually used by astronomers, is available in James Carl Evans, The History and Practice of Ancient Astronomy (1988). Two Hellenistic textbooks of elementary astronomy, available in English translation, can give the reader the flavour of astronomy as it was taught in ancient Greece: Alan C. Bowen and Robert B. Todd, Cleomedes’ Lectures on Astronomy (2004); and James Evans and J. Lennart Berggren, Geminos’s Introduction to the Phenomena: A Translation and Study of a Hellenistic Survey of Astronomy (2006). A detailed study demonstrating Greek use of Babylonian astronomical methods is provided by Alexander Jones, Astronomical Papyri from Oxyrhynchus (1999). A readable short account of the problem of cosmic distances is given by Albert van Helden, Measuring the Universe: Cosmic Dimensions from Aristarchus to Halley (1985).
The Islamic world, China, Japan, India, and the West in the Middle Ages
Aydin Sayili, The Observatory in Islam and Its Place in the General History of the Observatory (1960), gives a survey of Islamic astronomy that emphasizes its institutional aspects. A book focused on the modeling of planetary motion from the 11th to the 15th century is George Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories During the Golden Age of Islam (1994). A massive and generously illustrated study of the instruments used by Islamic astronomers is provided by David A. King, In Synchrony with the Heavens: Timekeeping and Instrumentation in Medieval Islamic Civilization (2005).
A readable introduction to the history of astronomy in China is provided by Colin Ronan, The Shorter Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 2 (1981), an abridgment of Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 3–4, part 1 (1959). The more mathematical aspects of Chinese astronomy are covered in Nathan Sivin, Cosmos and Computation in Early Chinese Mathematical Astronomy (1969). For Japan, a good survey is Shigeru Nakayama, A History of Japanese Astronomy: Chinese Background and Western Impact (1969). An introduction to the history of astronomy in India is provided in S.N. Sen and Kripa Shankar Shukla, History of Astronomy in India, 2nd ed. (2000).
For medieval Europe, the following are especially recommended: Bruce S. Eastwood, Ordering the Heavens: Roman Astronomy and Cosmology in the Carolingian Renaissance (2007); Stephen McCluskey, Astronomies and Cultures in Early Medieval Europe (1998); and Edward Grant, Planets, Stars, and Orbs: The Medieval Cosmos, 1200–1687 (1994). English translations of two widely used medieval textbooks of astronomy are Lynn Thorndike, The Sphere of Sacrobosco and Its Commentators (1949); and (for the Theorica planetarum) Edward Grant, A Source Book in Medieval Science (1974).
The best biography of Tycho Brahe is Victor E. Thoren, The Lord of Uraniborg: A Biography of Tycho Brahe (1990). Tycho’s own account of his instruments and discoveries may be found in Hans Raeder, Elis Strömgren, and Bengt Strömgren (trans. and eds.), Tycho Brahe’s Description of His Instruments and Scientific Work, as Given in Astronomiae instauratae mechanica (1946), rev. with commentary by Alena Hadravová, Petr Hadrava, and Jole R. Shackelford under the title Instruments of the Renewed Astronomy (1996). John Robert Christianson, On Tycho’s Island: Tycho Brahe and His Assistants, 1570–1601 (2000), gives a vivid account of Tycho’s circle of assistants and collaborators.
A short readable discussion of Copernicus’s system of the world is available in Michael J. Crowe, Theories of the World from Antiquity to the Copernican Revolution (1990). English translations of Copernicus’s Commentariolus and Rheticus’s Narratio prima may be found in Three Copernican Treatises, 3rd ed., rev. (1971), with introduction and notes by Edward Rosen (trans.). An analysis of Copernicus’s motives, including an argument that astrology played a major part, is presented in Robert S. Westman, The Copernican Question: Prognostication, Skepticism, and Celestial Order (2011).
The classic biography of Kepler is Max Caspar, Kepler, trans. from German and ed. by C. Doris Hellman, updated by Owen Gingerich and Alain Segonds (1993).
Works on Galileo and the telescope include Galileo Galilei, Sidereus Nuncius; or, The Sidereal Messenger, trans. from Latin by Albert van Helden (1989); Albert van Helden, The Invention of the Telescope (1977); as well as the excellent short biography by Michael Sharratt, Galileo: Decisive Innovator (1994).
Newton and the Enlightenment
The history of planetary theory from the century before Newton to the century after is surveyed in René Taton and Curtis Wilson (eds.), Planetary Astronomy from the Renaissance to the Rise of Astrophysics, Part A: Tycho Brahe to Newton (1989), and Part B: The Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries (1995), vol. 2 of The General History of Astronomy. The standard biography of Newton, which includes many connections to astronomy, is Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (1980).
Halley’s career is the focus of Alan Cook, Edmond Halley: Charting the Heavens and the Seas (1998). The 18th-century expeditions to determine the shape of Earth are related in Michael Rand Hoare, The Quest for the True Figure of the Earth: Ideas and Expeditions in Four Centuries of Geodesy (2004). Works on William and Caroline Herschel include Michael Hoskin, Discoverers of the Universe: William and Caroline Herschel (2011), and The Herschel Partnership: As Viewed by Caroline (2003).
Still useful is Agnes Clerke, A Popular History of Astronomy During the Ninteenth Century, 4th ed. (1902); but a more up-to-date history is Dieter B. Herrmann, The History of Astronomy from Herschel to Hertzsprung, trans. from German and rev. by Kevin Krisciunas (1984). The Neptune episode is examined in Morton Grosser, The Discovery of Neptune (1962). The observing program of Lord Rosse is described in Patrick Moore, The Astronomy of Birr Castle (1971). Accounts of the rise of spectroscopy include Barbara Becker, Unravelling Starlight: William and Margaret Huggins and the Rise of the New Astronomy (2011); and J.B. Hearnshaw, The Analysis of Starlight: One Hundred and Fifty Years of Astronomical Spectroscopy (1986).
20th and 21st centuries
Comprehensive articles on astrophysics in the first half of the 20th century are available in Owen Gingerich (ed.), Astrophysics and Twentieth-Century Astronomy to 1950: Part A (1984), vol. 4 of The General History of Astronomy. The resolution of the debates over the size of the Milky Way and the nature of the spirals, as well as the discovery of the expansion of the universe, is related in Robert W. Smith, The Expanding Universe: Astronomy’s “Great Debate,” 1900–1931 (1982). Accounts of astronomical tests of Einstein’s general theory of relativity include Jeffrey Crelinsten, Einstein’s Jury: The Race to Test Relativity (2006); and Clifford Will, Was Einstein Right?: Putting General Relativity to the Test (1986). Hubble’s work is presented in Gale E. Christianson, Edwin Hubble: Mariner of the Nebulae (1995); and Edwin Hubble, The Realm of the Nebulae (1936). Helge Kragh, Cosmology and Controversy: The Historical Development of Two Theories of the Universe (1996), examines the big-bang theory and its short rivalry with the steady-state theory. The rise of radio astronomy is treated in Woodruff T. Sullivan, Cosmic Noise: A History of Early Radio Astronomy (2009). The space sciences and their dependence on military support are portrayed in David DeVorkin, Science with a Vengeance: How the Military Created the U.S. Space Sciences After World War II (1992). A detailed account of the Hubble Space Telescope is David DeVorkin and Robert W. Smith, The Hubble Space Telescope: Imaging the Universe (2004).