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The History of Astronomy
Packed with color photographs, this compelling volume chronicles the history of astronomy.
This extraordinary book traces the stories of humans interacting with the endless wonders of the night sky, beginning with the earliest superstitions and continuing through to the birth and development of the science of astronomy.
The authors, both expert astronomers, researched 29 locations worldwide, from Beijing's ancient observatory to the observatory in Puerto Rico that searches for alien radio signals. They also interviewed 26 of the world's most esteemed astronomers, including Stephen Hawking.
Comprehensive in scope, The History of Astronomy covers such areas as:
Australian Aborigines, Stonehenge, Polynesian navigators Egyptian, Chinese and Babylonian astronomers, the Star of Bethlehem Greek astronomers, early concepts of the Earth's shape and orbit Galileo, Copernicus, the far Universe The Solar System and the movements of the planets Newton, gravity, Halley Discovery of Uranus and Neptune, discovery and demotion of Pluto What stars are made of and why they shine Hubble, the Cosmos, new galaxies, the Big Bang Pulsars, quasars and black holes Are we alone? Through its engaging narrative and stunning full-color photography, The History of Astronomy tells a remarkable story of a subject that continues to test the limits of imagination and exploration.
This extraordinary book traces the stories of humans interacting with the endless wonders of the night sky, beginning with the earliest superstitions and continuing through to the birth and development of the science of astronomy.
The authors, both expert astronomers, researched 29 locations worldwide, from Beijing's ancient observatory to the observatory in Puerto Rico that searches for alien radio signals. They also interviewed 26 of the world's most esteemed astronomers, including Stephen Hawking.
Comprehensive in scope, The History of Astronomy covers such areas as:
Australian Aborigines, Stonehenge, Polynesian navigators Egyptian, Chinese and Babylonian astronomers, the Star of Bethlehem Greek astronomers, early concepts of the Earth's shape and orbit Galileo, Copernicus, the far Universe The Solar System and the movements of the planets Newton, gravity, Halley Discovery of Uranus and Neptune, discovery and demotion of Pluto What stars are made of and why they shine Hubble, the Cosmos, new galaxies, the Big Bang Pulsars, quasars and black holes Are we alone? Through its engaging narrative and stunning full-color photography, The History of Astronomy tells a remarkable story of a subject that continues to test the limits of imagination and exploration.
288 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
September 24, 2024
Great book - the story of astronomy with lots of photos, people's stories, efforts, searching and finding answers about where we are, when it all started and where it might be going.
August 31, 2012
3.5 stars.
Kind of like the "Short History of Nearly Everything" of astronomy. The balance of science to biography/history is something like 30% to 70%. I was hoping for a bit more of the hard science, but I guess this book is chasing more of a general audience. The fact that this book is 240 pages and has no diagrams, footnotes/endnotes, or bibliography, should tell you what kind of book this is.
There were a few things that annoyed me about the presentation of the book. Firstly, the authors are too "present" in the text. They keep putting in cutesy personal things that have no relevance or interest to the reader, such as "X was short at 5 foot 6.5 inches, the same height as one of us (Heather)!" and "Y was born in Z, only 10 miles from where this book is being written!"
Also I noticed a few factual errors, not necessarily about the science, just small things, like saying that Jodie Foster portrayed SETI's Jill Tarter in Contact. Uh NOPE.
Kind of like the "Short History of Nearly Everything" of astronomy. The balance of science to biography/history is something like 30% to 70%. I was hoping for a bit more of the hard science, but I guess this book is chasing more of a general audience. The fact that this book is 240 pages and has no diagrams, footnotes/endnotes, or bibliography, should tell you what kind of book this is.
There were a few things that annoyed me about the presentation of the book. Firstly, the authors are too "present" in the text. They keep putting in cutesy personal things that have no relevance or interest to the reader, such as "X was short at 5 foot 6.5 inches, the same height as one of us (Heather)!" and "Y was born in Z, only 10 miles from where this book is being written!"
Also I noticed a few factual errors, not necessarily about the science, just small things, like saying that Jodie Foster portrayed SETI's Jill Tarter in Contact. Uh NOPE.
September 19, 2025
Beautifully illustrated with full page full color photographs, compellingly told, this was a delight, from the earliest ages to the latest nobel prize winners, and a bunch of increasingly larger telescopes along the way.
July 22, 2021
A fascinating book with a great personal touch.
July 3, 2013
Astronomy is one of the oldest realms of Science. But its association with Astrology, a word which may sounds similar but quiet different in sense, humble its progress throughout the ages until the time of the first telescope. We often heard that the people of the antiquity look up the sky for directions from the distant sea to home. Not only that the sky beacons as their guide, but the people in the past consult the sky to learn when it is the perfect time for planting crops when they stop to become nomads and started agriculture. Astronomy was part of their lives. Their livelihood is goes synchronously with the sky which later embedded in their culture.
Over the ages, from the time Galileo sighted the moons of Jupiter and the dark Sun spots, we, the common people who are not into the science of Astronomy, have become more distant relationship with this glorious science. Ordinary people will scratch their head to declare their ignorance. As technology advances, knowing time is not anymore a problem. By glancing your watch, or your iPhone, you can easily tell the time instantly. Knowing your exact position today is never a herculean effort with GPS (Global Positioning System) wherever you are located.
But, not really.
Time, calendars, and GPS are just some of the product of Astronomy. The 12 months a year and 365 ¼ days per year are not taken out of nowhere but Astronomy. Astronomy is still part of our lives. Although it seems that only those at NASA feel it.
Navigators of today, like me, continue to use the almanacs and sextant with their sophisticated machines such as GPS and gyrocompass. They still look up the sky, although not as frequent as in the past, to check the accuracy of their technologically advanced instruments. In the ages of satellite navigation, marine navigators are still required to understand crude practical astronomy.
So, there.
The Story of Astronomy encapsulates the wonderful progress of Astronomy. From the great canyons of New Mexico to the gigantic Stonehenge, with the “rock stars” of Astronomy such as Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, the authors take you to the journey of discovering the story of Astronomy. Wonderfully written in a prose manner and user friendly, not a background of the science of
Astronomy is needed for you to enjoy this book. Celebrating how Astronomy direct its course towards what it is today despite the odds (such as the Catholic intervention and the world wars), this book is highly recommendable to the fans of science and its history.
Note: If you are finding a book about the “hard” science of astronomy, this is not the one. The book is more on the history of the Astronomy from observation to exploration.
Over the ages, from the time Galileo sighted the moons of Jupiter and the dark Sun spots, we, the common people who are not into the science of Astronomy, have become more distant relationship with this glorious science. Ordinary people will scratch their head to declare their ignorance. As technology advances, knowing time is not anymore a problem. By glancing your watch, or your iPhone, you can easily tell the time instantly. Knowing your exact position today is never a herculean effort with GPS (Global Positioning System) wherever you are located.
But, not really.
Time, calendars, and GPS are just some of the product of Astronomy. The 12 months a year and 365 ¼ days per year are not taken out of nowhere but Astronomy. Astronomy is still part of our lives. Although it seems that only those at NASA feel it.
Navigators of today, like me, continue to use the almanacs and sextant with their sophisticated machines such as GPS and gyrocompass. They still look up the sky, although not as frequent as in the past, to check the accuracy of their technologically advanced instruments. In the ages of satellite navigation, marine navigators are still required to understand crude practical astronomy.
So, there.
The Story of Astronomy encapsulates the wonderful progress of Astronomy. From the great canyons of New Mexico to the gigantic Stonehenge, with the “rock stars” of Astronomy such as Aristotle, Ptolemy, Copernicus, Galileo, and Newton, the authors take you to the journey of discovering the story of Astronomy. Wonderfully written in a prose manner and user friendly, not a background of the science of
Astronomy is needed for you to enjoy this book. Celebrating how Astronomy direct its course towards what it is today despite the odds (such as the Catholic intervention and the world wars), this book is highly recommendable to the fans of science and its history.
Note: If you are finding a book about the “hard” science of astronomy, this is not the one. The book is more on the history of the Astronomy from observation to exploration.
July 21, 2013
Since the dawn of civilization, maybe much earlier, humans have looked at the patterns in the sky and wondered if they contain a message for them. The effect of the Sun was pretty obvious - life could not exist without it, and seasonal variations in the strength of its brightness and length of the day had important consequences for agricultural societies. The moon, on the other hand, was like a celestial timekeeper - going through the same cycle of phases over and over again. Eventually the major civilizations of the world found ways of recording regularities in the behaviour of the heavenly bodies. The fixed background of the stars provided a framework for recording seasonal changes in the movement of the Sun and the Moon and the other planets - five of them were discovered pretty early. Beliefs that planets and stars governed the lives of people and nations on the earth grew and gave rise to astrology. The need to make better astrological calculations developed the science of astronomy.
In this beautifully printed and illustrated book Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest tell the story of Astronomy from the first recorded observations by ancient civilizations to the latest findings of the Hubble telescope. Around the beginning of the Christian era the astronomers had developed a model for the universe that accounted for the movement of the planets against the background of the stars and made reasonably good predictions of events like eclipses. This model remained practically unchanged for a millennium and half until Nicolas Copernicus found that replacing the Earth by the Sun at the centre of the Universe made the mathematics of planetary orbits simpler. It was possibly the first case in the history of ideas, where the simplicity and beauty of a mathematical model was considered a good enough reason to change our physical picture of the world. Once this fundamental shift was made, it inevitably led via Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler to Isaac Newton who combined it with another strand coming from Galileo to create a grand synthesis that accounted for the movement of cosmic bodies as well as that of mundane objects like apples falling from branches.
The book is written in an interesting conversational and anecdotal style. Heavy mathematics is kept out and the emphasis is on developing the reader's intuitive understanding. The pictures add to one's enjoyment and understanding. An excellent introduction to a fascinating subject.
In this beautifully printed and illustrated book Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest tell the story of Astronomy from the first recorded observations by ancient civilizations to the latest findings of the Hubble telescope. Around the beginning of the Christian era the astronomers had developed a model for the universe that accounted for the movement of the planets against the background of the stars and made reasonably good predictions of events like eclipses. This model remained practically unchanged for a millennium and half until Nicolas Copernicus found that replacing the Earth by the Sun at the centre of the Universe made the mathematics of planetary orbits simpler. It was possibly the first case in the history of ideas, where the simplicity and beauty of a mathematical model was considered a good enough reason to change our physical picture of the world. Once this fundamental shift was made, it inevitably led via Tycho Brahe and Johannes Kepler to Isaac Newton who combined it with another strand coming from Galileo to create a grand synthesis that accounted for the movement of cosmic bodies as well as that of mundane objects like apples falling from branches.
The book is written in an interesting conversational and anecdotal style. Heavy mathematics is kept out and the emphasis is on developing the reader's intuitive understanding. The pictures add to one's enjoyment and understanding. An excellent introduction to a fascinating subject.
February 22, 2012
Of all the sciences, astronomy is probably the one that most often grabs us when we're young. If you want hands on experience of particle physics or cell biology you need to be in a lab. To get practical experience of astronomy all you've got to do is go out on a dark night. I think this explains the enduring appeal of the BBC's The Sky of Night programme. It's years since I watched it regularly, but I've only got to catch the opening of that theme music to get a lump in my throat. Astronomy has a universal appeal, and the team of Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest tell it wonderfully in this highly approachable book.
The great thing about The Story of Astronomy is the way it tells the story of thousands of years of discovery through people. It is genuinely engaging and fascinating. Whether we're hearing about Copernicus and Galileo or Hubble and Leavitt there's a whole host of individuals helping us to fill in what genuinely is a story with good narrative thrust. A lot of it inevitably is familiar ground. (There's quite a lot of overlap, for example, with my own Light Years - since light is the main vehicle for exploring astronomy - and it takes a very similar people-driven narrative approach.) Even so, the authors manage to keep it fresh. For example I found the section on the discovery of Pluto and its (very sensible) demotion to a minor planet had plenty that was new to me, and kept me turning the pages.
There's only one gripe I had with this book that nearly made me drop it down to four stars - the authors insist on repeatedly including little interview snippets where people we've neither heard of or, frankly, care about keep putting in their opinions. It's fine to have little interviews in a book if the subject is directly relevant to the topic. So, say, with Jocelyn Bell Burnell on pulsars. But not these regular visits to historians of science and such so they can throw in a bon mot. It smacks too much of a book trying hard to be a TV series ('Look, we've got talking heads and everything!'), it breaks the flow, and I really don't like it.
That apart, though - and it's relatively easy to ignore - this book is delight and a must for anyone with even a passing interest in looking up at the night sky. Which should be all of us.
Review first published on www.popularscience.co.uk and reproduced with permission
The great thing about The Story of Astronomy is the way it tells the story of thousands of years of discovery through people. It is genuinely engaging and fascinating. Whether we're hearing about Copernicus and Galileo or Hubble and Leavitt there's a whole host of individuals helping us to fill in what genuinely is a story with good narrative thrust. A lot of it inevitably is familiar ground. (There's quite a lot of overlap, for example, with my own Light Years - since light is the main vehicle for exploring astronomy - and it takes a very similar people-driven narrative approach.) Even so, the authors manage to keep it fresh. For example I found the section on the discovery of Pluto and its (very sensible) demotion to a minor planet had plenty that was new to me, and kept me turning the pages.
There's only one gripe I had with this book that nearly made me drop it down to four stars - the authors insist on repeatedly including little interview snippets where people we've neither heard of or, frankly, care about keep putting in their opinions. It's fine to have little interviews in a book if the subject is directly relevant to the topic. So, say, with Jocelyn Bell Burnell on pulsars. But not these regular visits to historians of science and such so they can throw in a bon mot. It smacks too much of a book trying hard to be a TV series ('Look, we've got talking heads and everything!'), it breaks the flow, and I really don't like it.
That apart, though - and it's relatively easy to ignore - this book is delight and a must for anyone with even a passing interest in looking up at the night sky. Which should be all of us.
Review first published on www.popularscience.co.uk and reproduced with permission
December 21, 2014
I thought it was a pretty good summary. It had the possibility of being dull, but I feel like the authors did a good job at keeping it interesting.
The authors noted they were inspired partly by Isaac Asimov's "The Universe" so I've pulled that off my bookshelf to read next.
Literally my biggest gripe with this book was I accidently gave myself really deep paper cuts about 5 times because the glossy pages are such high quality, that the ends are very sharp! Pretty much everytime I opened this book up, I would stupidly get more deep papercuts on the tips of my fingers! You'd think I'd learn!!!
The authors noted they were inspired partly by Isaac Asimov's "The Universe" so I've pulled that off my bookshelf to read next.
Literally my biggest gripe with this book was I accidently gave myself really deep paper cuts about 5 times because the glossy pages are such high quality, that the ends are very sharp! Pretty much everytime I opened this book up, I would stupidly get more deep papercuts on the tips of my fingers! You'd think I'd learn!!!
September 3, 2013
Heather Couper and Nigel Henbest present a very approachable and compelling overview of astronomy and help explain how we got where we are today. The History of Astronomy looks like a college text book at first glance. But don't let it intimidate you. Once you crack it open, it is very hard to put down. Couper and Henbest successfully present the history of astronomy in layman's terms and do an excellent job de-mystifying a subject rife with mystery. I highly recommend The History of Astronomy to anyone curious about astronomy or even science in general.
June 29, 2012
The pictures alone are just about worth the price of the book. The graphics and illustrations are breathtaking, ranging from the remains of ancient civilizations at Stonehenge and Chaco Canyon to images taken by the Hubble telescope. The text nicely complements the visual component of the book: it’s a serviceable, readable introduction to, as the title says, the history of astronomy. Recommended.
March 17, 2013
This is the history of astronomy as seen by 2 British astronomers - Heater and Nigel.
The book is completely non-technically written so anyone who has the faintest interest in the subject can pick it up and read it in leisure hours. If you take into account the format and number of pictures you can even consider at a coffee-table book.
Although I would like to read a more technical book I think this one is great for the intended audience and would recommend it to anyone.
The book is completely non-technically written so anyone who has the faintest interest in the subject can pick it up and read it in leisure hours. If you take into account the format and number of pictures you can even consider at a coffee-table book.
Although I would like to read a more technical book I think this one is great for the intended audience and would recommend it to anyone.
April 10, 2013
This is a great read for those of you who are wondering about the history of Astronomy. It gives a very detailed yet very interesting stories about Astronomy and how it started, with humans wondering about the wonders of night sky and what is out there. It is also packed with beautiful photographs and illustrations. It is beautifully written by a two british astronomers. As I said this is a good read for those of you who are curious about the history of astronomy.
December 4, 2014
I really enjoyed this, particularly the coverage of the story from Copernicus through Galileo, Newton, Kepler etc. It joined the different contributions to our understanding of the solar system really effectively.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews