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Stargazer: The Life and Times of the Telescope
The telescope is undoubtedly one of the world’s most far-reaching inventions. For the past four centuries the telescope has stood at the forefront of human discovery. From its humble beginnings in seventeenth-century Holland, when a simple spectacle-maker first presented his invention to his country’s military leaders, to today’s colossal structures housed in space-age cathedrals, the telescope has unlocked nature’s secrets. And in the past decade, the Hubble Space Telescope has brought us to the very edges of the universe, and the very beginning of time. How did the telescope —a potent mix of art, science, and engineering—reach its present level of sophistication?The history of the telescope is a rich story of human ingenuity and perseverance involving some of the most colorful figures of the scientific world —Galileo, Johann Kepler, Isaac Newton, William Herschel, George Ellery Hale, and Edwin Hubble. Stargazer brings to life the story of these brilliant, and sometime quirky, scientists as they turned their eyes and ideas beyond what anyone thought possible.Professor Fred Watson, one of Australia’s top astronomers, writes clearly and skillfully, without technical jargon but with a dash of humor, explaining the science and technology behind the telescope, and the enormous impact that it has had for four hundred years on how we have come to understand our universe.
368 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 2004
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September 29, 2015
_Stargazer: The Life and Times of the Telescope_ by Fred Watson is an epic, far-ranging history of one of the most important instruments in science. Watson traced the origin and development of the telescope from nearly four hundred years ago, when Dutch craftsmen Hans Lipperhey first brought to the world's attention the telescope in 1608 (the author demonstrated that though he gets credit for first bringing it to international attention, he is perhaps not the instrument's original inventor, as there were at least several near simultaneous separate inventions of it), all the way to the present with the impressive orbiting Hubble telescope.
The book is at times as much a history of astronomy as it is of the telescope, chronicling some of the lives of such luminaries as Galileo, Johannes Kepler, William Herschel, and George Ellery Hale and many of the big discoveries, such as the discoveries of the cloud belts of Jupiter, Saturn's rings, the planet Uranus, the moons of Mars, and the first spiral galaxy. Some of the most interesting accounts were of people and discoveries virtually unknown to the general public, such as that of William Gascoigne, a brilliant man who invented the telescopic sight by accident when he saw a spider drop between the objective and the eyepiece, leaving a thread behind it, leading him to develop two crossed threads that would enable an astronomer to point precisely at a star, and who also invented another device (also used in the focus of any eyepiece) that allowed for measuring the angular diameter of the Sun or Moon and the distances between close pairs of stars. Tragically, his life was cut short when he was killed in the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, part of the English Civil War (he was only 24).
The focus of the book however was on the origin and evolution of the telescope, the author detailing each new development in telescope technology, supplying the reader with diagrams to discern the inner workings of such advancements as the Keplerian or inverting telescope (one in which the field of view is independent of the diameter of the objective, replacing some of the problems with the Galilean telescope) and the Cassegrain telescope (one that used a convex secondary mirror to intercept the beam from the main paraboloid mirror before it formed an image, refocusing it back in such as way that an image was formed that could be magnified with an ordinary lens eyepiece behind the mirror). Of near equal importance was the evolution of telescope mounts, devices that held the telescope and allowed it to track the movement of celestial objects across the sky. Though there were some contemporary illustrations of various mounts, I wish there had been more diagrams for such arrangements as the equatorial mounting, English equatorial, and German equatorial to assist the lay reader.
Problems in telescope development were discussed, issues that bedeviled generations of astronomers and engineers, including chromatic aberration (when colored halos appear around images, a problem that mystified astronomers for many decades and was not corrected until two or more lenses were used in combination, lenses whose respective color errors would cancel each other out), comas (when stars take on the appearance of comets with short tails), and spherical aberration (a blurring of images resulting from objective lenses with curved surfaces, as the focused beams of light from a celestial object would fail to cross at a single point).
The history of famous and noteworthy individual telescopes was a very interesting feature of the book. Early telescope makers solved the problems of chromatic and spherical aberration by making the focal length of an objective very long in comparison with its diameter, reducing both aberrations to a level that would not be noticeable, resulting in long, spindly telescopes. Johannes Hevelius, a seventeenth century amateur in the city of Danzig, built a monstrous telescope whose focal length was 150 feet long, supported from a mast 90 feet high, its working more like the rigging of a sailing ship than an optical instrument, so ungainly that a fair number of men were needed to move and point it in the right direction and that any breeze would leave it quivering uncontrollably, making observation difficult. Another notable one is William Herschel's Forty-foot telescope, a massive for the time 48 inches in diameter, the telescope that he is best remembered for and one that still adorns the seal of the Royal Astronomical Society, an expensive object that would not have come to fruition without financial support from King George III (an early forerunner of national funding for scientific projects), and that when it came into use in 1789 proved something of a disappointment, thanks to high copper content of the mirrors (which tarnished rapidly and required frequent repolishing), difficult to manage without two additional workmen, and of course the famous British weather (though the telescope was maintained despite regular scientific usage to impress the King's guests as after all he did pay for it). Still another one was the Irish telescope named the Leviathan of Parsonstown, a massive telescope that was first used in 1845, its four tonne mirror taking sixteen weeks to cool once cast (and had to be cast five times owing to faulty cooling and accidents), an instrument that while it did produce some good science (discovering sixty "spiral nebulae" - they weren't know as galaxies yet), did not live up to its full potential, thanks to attentions being focused elsewhere due to the catastrophic potato famine of 1845-1848, and was dismantled in the early 20th century though between 1996 and 1998 it was lovingly restored to full working order with a new aluminum mirror and a modern hydraulic system to move it.
A good book, I thought some of the explanations could have been better. It had many contemporary illustrations, copious endnotes, an extensive bibliography, a glossary, a listing of famous telescopes today, and a global map showing their relative positions in the world today.
The book is at times as much a history of astronomy as it is of the telescope, chronicling some of the lives of such luminaries as Galileo, Johannes Kepler, William Herschel, and George Ellery Hale and many of the big discoveries, such as the discoveries of the cloud belts of Jupiter, Saturn's rings, the planet Uranus, the moons of Mars, and the first spiral galaxy. Some of the most interesting accounts were of people and discoveries virtually unknown to the general public, such as that of William Gascoigne, a brilliant man who invented the telescopic sight by accident when he saw a spider drop between the objective and the eyepiece, leaving a thread behind it, leading him to develop two crossed threads that would enable an astronomer to point precisely at a star, and who also invented another device (also used in the focus of any eyepiece) that allowed for measuring the angular diameter of the Sun or Moon and the distances between close pairs of stars. Tragically, his life was cut short when he was killed in the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, part of the English Civil War (he was only 24).
The focus of the book however was on the origin and evolution of the telescope, the author detailing each new development in telescope technology, supplying the reader with diagrams to discern the inner workings of such advancements as the Keplerian or inverting telescope (one in which the field of view is independent of the diameter of the objective, replacing some of the problems with the Galilean telescope) and the Cassegrain telescope (one that used a convex secondary mirror to intercept the beam from the main paraboloid mirror before it formed an image, refocusing it back in such as way that an image was formed that could be magnified with an ordinary lens eyepiece behind the mirror). Of near equal importance was the evolution of telescope mounts, devices that held the telescope and allowed it to track the movement of celestial objects across the sky. Though there were some contemporary illustrations of various mounts, I wish there had been more diagrams for such arrangements as the equatorial mounting, English equatorial, and German equatorial to assist the lay reader.
Problems in telescope development were discussed, issues that bedeviled generations of astronomers and engineers, including chromatic aberration (when colored halos appear around images, a problem that mystified astronomers for many decades and was not corrected until two or more lenses were used in combination, lenses whose respective color errors would cancel each other out), comas (when stars take on the appearance of comets with short tails), and spherical aberration (a blurring of images resulting from objective lenses with curved surfaces, as the focused beams of light from a celestial object would fail to cross at a single point).
The history of famous and noteworthy individual telescopes was a very interesting feature of the book. Early telescope makers solved the problems of chromatic and spherical aberration by making the focal length of an objective very long in comparison with its diameter, reducing both aberrations to a level that would not be noticeable, resulting in long, spindly telescopes. Johannes Hevelius, a seventeenth century amateur in the city of Danzig, built a monstrous telescope whose focal length was 150 feet long, supported from a mast 90 feet high, its working more like the rigging of a sailing ship than an optical instrument, so ungainly that a fair number of men were needed to move and point it in the right direction and that any breeze would leave it quivering uncontrollably, making observation difficult. Another notable one is William Herschel's Forty-foot telescope, a massive for the time 48 inches in diameter, the telescope that he is best remembered for and one that still adorns the seal of the Royal Astronomical Society, an expensive object that would not have come to fruition without financial support from King George III (an early forerunner of national funding for scientific projects), and that when it came into use in 1789 proved something of a disappointment, thanks to high copper content of the mirrors (which tarnished rapidly and required frequent repolishing), difficult to manage without two additional workmen, and of course the famous British weather (though the telescope was maintained despite regular scientific usage to impress the King's guests as after all he did pay for it). Still another one was the Irish telescope named the Leviathan of Parsonstown, a massive telescope that was first used in 1845, its four tonne mirror taking sixteen weeks to cool once cast (and had to be cast five times owing to faulty cooling and accidents), an instrument that while it did produce some good science (discovering sixty "spiral nebulae" - they weren't know as galaxies yet), did not live up to its full potential, thanks to attentions being focused elsewhere due to the catastrophic potato famine of 1845-1848, and was dismantled in the early 20th century though between 1996 and 1998 it was lovingly restored to full working order with a new aluminum mirror and a modern hydraulic system to move it.
A good book, I thought some of the explanations could have been better. It had many contemporary illustrations, copious endnotes, an extensive bibliography, a glossary, a listing of famous telescopes today, and a global map showing their relative positions in the world today.
August 14, 2024
This was a great read right up until the last chapter. Unnecessary yapping about the “Big Bang” and “millions of years.” Overall, good book, but the end got away from the historical events side of it, and overall it was rushed.
April 3, 2011
This lukewarm history trots along at an even, unexciting tempo, even when it feels like the author was rushing to meet a deadline. We meet and greet many heroes and villains in the story of the telescope, but after 1800 the story becomes a summary. I would have liked even more technical discussion of the science of optics and light. The topic of radio astronomy is only briefly touched upon, and I think this is a missed opportunity for this book. I would have liked greater detail about astronomers such as Hale and Hubble. Author Watson starts the book brilliantly: his opening chapter, on the social phenomena of aperture mania in today's world of Very Large Telescopes, is tantalizing ... after then taking his tour of the history of the telescope, back again to today's astronomy, the final chapter is a quick and unsatisfying survey.
August 19, 2018
This book does what it sets out to do: it details the broad history of the telescope.
Some have complained that the book is very dry. I don't see why every book has to be heart-pounding or all-consuming; I enjoyed it precisely because it was a book I could put down. I thought Watson showed the general progression of progress very well.
I would also like to point out that very few others have discussed gravitational telescopes, and I find them fascinating.
Some complaints:
- the names come very quickly and aren't often distinguishable, so maybe just focus on the overall trend on a first read
- the technical language of optics and mechanics can confuse the inexperienced reader
- the last chapter (titled "Epilogue") was just bizarre because it's predicting the next round of telescopic developments, but it was done 10+ years ago and so many things are already incorrect
Some have complained that the book is very dry. I don't see why every book has to be heart-pounding or all-consuming; I enjoyed it precisely because it was a book I could put down. I thought Watson showed the general progression of progress very well.
I would also like to point out that very few others have discussed gravitational telescopes, and I find them fascinating.
Some complaints:
- the names come very quickly and aren't often distinguishable, so maybe just focus on the overall trend on a first read
- the technical language of optics and mechanics can confuse the inexperienced reader
- the last chapter (titled "Epilogue") was just bizarre because it's predicting the next round of telescopic developments, but it was done 10+ years ago and so many things are already incorrect
September 10, 2018
If you are interested in the history of astronomy, as I am, this book is likely to be an enjoyable addition to the big science of the universe as it tells the story of the humble instrument responsible for the discoveries. I did not look closely at the cover when I was given this book, and I originally thought it was an autobiography of Fred Watson, hence a story about his work with the Australian telescope and more generally how Australian astronomy has contributed to the field. Somewhat interesting perhaps. In fact it is the story of the telescope, from its pre-Galilean conception through to the modern day and (just slightly) beyond. Quite fascinating.
For something we take for granted as a relatively simple technology, it is surprising how much there is to it. There is the science, of course, of how light reflects and refracts, which determined early on what was possible. There is then the art and technology needed to produce the parts, a case where achieving the physics is limited by the ability to use chemistry (and initially geology), and by the precision of manufacturing (getting surfaces curved correctly as their size increased was not trivial). Then there is astronomy itself - what astronomers needed their telescopes to do also limited or pushed manufacturers to advance design and use cases.
It is not surprising that the telescope's story is interwoven with the story of cosmology and astronomy, with their fascinating interplay of theory and observation. This interplay of the possible and practical is a little more subtle in the telescope itself, but a fitting complement to the grander story of how we discovered the universe. There are also many facets of personality and 'politics' which characterize the humans involved. Fred manages to include himself within these in an appropriately modest way, providing a personal and partly Australian touch (I wonder if some would leave the Australian/Southern Hemisphere story out?), whilst retaining focus on the big players involved.
For something we take for granted as a relatively simple technology, it is surprising how much there is to it. There is the science, of course, of how light reflects and refracts, which determined early on what was possible. There is then the art and technology needed to produce the parts, a case where achieving the physics is limited by the ability to use chemistry (and initially geology), and by the precision of manufacturing (getting surfaces curved correctly as their size increased was not trivial). Then there is astronomy itself - what astronomers needed their telescopes to do also limited or pushed manufacturers to advance design and use cases.
It is not surprising that the telescope's story is interwoven with the story of cosmology and astronomy, with their fascinating interplay of theory and observation. This interplay of the possible and practical is a little more subtle in the telescope itself, but a fitting complement to the grander story of how we discovered the universe. There are also many facets of personality and 'politics' which characterize the humans involved. Fred manages to include himself within these in an appropriately modest way, providing a personal and partly Australian touch (I wonder if some would leave the Australian/Southern Hemisphere story out?), whilst retaining focus on the big players involved.
June 22, 2021
If you’re interested in the history of the telescope up to 1900 or so, then this is the book for you. Very easy but not condescending read for non-specialists, with good explanations of how the optics work, and the technological challenges faced and overcome, along with historical anecdotes of the key figures. Tim Martin’s review on this site provides more details of what you’ll learn. Now what you don’t get (aside from the introduction) is much in the way of coverage of 20th (and early 21st) century telescope development, or the remarkable astronomical discoveries that have resulted. It feels like the author had a deadline to meet and kind of mailed in the last few chapters. Which is a shame because the continuation of the telescope story is, to my mind, more interesting, than the pre-1900 period. I recommend “An Acre of Glass” by J.B. Zirker to continue on where this book leaves off.
June 2, 2021
An interesting piece of scientific history. I appreciate that it was written by a real astronomer.
I liked the beginning more than the end. There were just so many people doing so many things that it got harder to follow. But still a worthwhile read.
I liked the beginning more than the end. There were just so many people doing so many things that it got harder to follow. But still a worthwhile read.
October 20, 2021
A delightful and quick read on the history of the Telescope. Many amusing and interesting stories about the major and minor figures. Despite being an astronomer, i learned quite a bit from this book.
January 31, 2019
Best available synoptic history of the subject. Slight Australian bias.
July 12, 2012
A history of the telescope (and, by extension, astronomy), this book is not skimpy on facts. Dr. Watson knows his stuff. As a non-science person (who is trying to reform her ways), I’m glad I read Couper and Henbest’s History of Astronomy first as it gave me a better foundation on which to understand the information presented in this book. Stargazer is interesting, but, at the end of the day, I still feel like I’m missing some crucial piece of information to better understand the technical aspects of telescopes (although it could very well just be me). I’d like to find a book with similar information but more diagrams – being such a visual field, I think that would help me get a stronger grasp on the topic. Quasi-recommended – it’s educational, but those without much background in astronomy may feel lost in places.
November 29, 2013
I was very surprised by the fact that I actually liked this book. I thought that maybe the subject matter (telescopes) may become a bit dull, and although I did find those parts quite dull - the great writing and the sort of short biographies on some of my favourite astronomers made it very interesting!
April 15, 2017
Fascinating
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews