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Books > Science & Mathematics > Astronomy, space & time > Astronomical charts & atlases
Discover the wonders of the Universe with this complete
introduction to observing and understanding the night sky. This
practical guide explains and demystifies stargazing, teaching you
to recognize different kinds of objects and showing you how they
move through the sky over the course of the night and the year. It
shows you how to understand and enjoy the cosmos, building your
practical astronomy skills from the basics to more advanced
techniques. Beginning with an explanation of the Universe itself -
how big is it, what shape is it, how old is it, and will it end? -
it then takes you on a tour around the night sky, building up your
knowledge in simple stages. Practical advice begins with naked-eye
observations, then illustrated step-by-step instructions show you
how to set up and use binoculars and telescopes, and how to take
your own pictures of the night sky. It also lets you take a closer
look at the different objects you can view in the night sky,
telling you how to train your eye to recognize basic patterns of
stars (constellations) and how to tell planets apart from other
celestial bodies, showing you how to observe them in an innovative
step-by-step way. An atlas of the night sky is also included, with
charts that can be used in both the northern and southern
hemispheres throughout the year. Accessible, inspirational, and
authoritative, Stargazing for Beginners will enthuse and inform
anyone who wants to expand their knowledge of the night sky.
The first American woman to walk in space recounts her experience
as part of the team that launched, rescued, repaired, and
maintained the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble Space Telescope
has revolutionized our understanding of the universe. It has, among
many other achievements, revealed thousands of galaxies in what
seemed to be empty patches of sky; transformed our knowledge of
black holes; found dwarf planets with moons orbiting other stars;
and measured precisely how fast the universe is expanding. In
Handprints on Hubble, retired astronaut Kathryn Sullivan describes
her work on the NASA team that made all of this possible. Sullivan,
the first American woman to walk in space, recounts how she and
other astronauts, engineers, and scientists launched, rescued,
repaired, and maintained Hubble, the most productive observatory
ever built. Along the way, Sullivan chronicles her early life as a
"Sputnik Baby," her path to NASA through oceanography, and her
initiation into the space program as one of "thirty-five new guys."
(She was also one of the first six women to join NASA's storied
astronaut corps.) She describes in vivid detail what liftoff feels
like inside a spacecraft (it's like "being in an earthquake and a
fighter jet at the same time"), shows us the view from a spacewalk,
and recounts the temporary grounding of the shuttle program after
the Challenger disaster. Sullivan explains that "maintainability"
was designed into Hubble, and she describes the work of inventing
the tools and processes that made on-orbit maintenance possible.
Because in-flight repair and upgrade was part of the plan, NASA was
able to fix a serious defect in Hubble's mirrors-leaving literal
and metaphorical "handprints on Hubble." Handprints on Hubble was
published with the support of the MIT Press Fund for Diverse
Voices.
'A delightful and utterly fascinating work of intellectual history.' Joshua Foer author of Moonwalking with Einstein
Despite a resurgence in popularity, horoscopes are generally considered to be pseudoscience today - but they were once a cutting-edge scientific tool. In this ingenious work of history, data scientist Alexander Boxer examines a treasure trove of esoteric classical sources to expose the deep imaginative framework by which - for millennia - we made sense of our fates. Astrology, he argues, was the ancient world's most ambitious applied mathematics problem, a grand data-analysis enterprise sustained by some of history's most brilliant minds, from Ptolemy to al-Kindi to Kepler.
A Scheme of Heaven explores the wonderful subtleties of astrological ideas. Telling the stories of their inventors and most influential exponents, Boxer puts them through their paces using modern data sets - finding that the methods of today's scientists are often uncomfortably close to those of astrology's ancient sages.
Nowadays we have stopped watching the sky. We are so submerged by
our towns' lights, constantly busy, hypnotised by the television,
that we hardly have time to contemplate the sky at night.We forget
the stars' beauty, the planet's slow sliding, the lunar rhythms and
the rotations of planets, season after season. This book is here to
capture people's imagination through pictures, and to stimulate the
reader to regain an interest in the stars, which was part of
people's daily life less than one century ago. It teaches us how to
use binoculars to discover the Moon and the stages of Venus, and
allows one to find their own constellation of the zodiac. It keeps
us fascinated by this science, the first real science of man, as
was the case with thousands of studious and keen people all those
years ago; it allows one to have a closer look at the universe
thanks to a modern and powerful machines and gives one the
opportunity to see the Sun, the planets and the stars too, in a
different and unexpected way. It enables one to discover the
existence of evanescent waves and galaxies about which we can only
voice a theory of a beginning and an end. It is not just a dry text
book but also one of philosophy of how this information could have
been gathered together, what are the certainties and the limits,
and where to find help and future indications to make a link with
our own horizons.
This book was neither written for people who work in this sector
nor for the adepts of astronogy.This book was conceived for those
who don't like formulae and for those who are interested in the
sciences and the world in general and may have been put off by the
harsh teaching methods at school.
It's a book madefor those who would like to spend an evening with
the Infinite or their spend their holidays in rediscovery of the
dark skies of isolated towns, a distant, strange and silent world
which one is able to understand better and discover more of each
day. easy to understand with stories about astronomy and spatial
researches, from the most easily observable objects in the darkness
to the most recent astrological knowledge.
48 celestial cards concerning 3 different areas of the north and
south allow plotting the most beautiful constellations in the night
anywhere you are. Those reproduce at midnight the Milky Way of
Equinox and Solstice but that also allows one to represent the sky,
at 11.00 pm as it was 15 days before, at 10.00 pm as it was 30 days
before or at 9.00 pm as it was 45 days before. In the same way, at
1.00 am it is possible to produce it as it will be the next 15
days, at 2.00 am as it will be the next 30 days or at 3.00 am as it
will be the next 45 days.
The 7 best pictures of the moon will allow anyone to reproduce the
most important satellite formations using just a simple set of
binoculars: first, a moving passage through the sky. Simple
suggestions and indications allow one to quickly recognise and
reproduce the main constellations and to complete some of the more
delicate ones with a telescope. A website and bibliography will
mean that the reader can further expand their horizons in the
future.
The glossary and the analytic index allow one to either quickly
clarify any eventual problems which are linked to the terminology,
or to easily spot a subject.
Are we alone in the universe? If not, where is everybody? An
engaging exploration of one of the most important unsolved problems
in science. Everything we know about how planets form and how life
arises suggests that human civilization on Earth should not be
unique. We ought to see abundant evidence of extraterrestrial
activity-but we don't. Where is everybody? In this volume in the
MIT Press Essential Knowledge series, science and technology writer
Wade Roush examines one of the great unsolved problems in science:
is there life, intelligent or otherwise, on other planets? This
paradox (they're bound to be out there; but where are they?), first
formulated by the famed physicist Enrico Fermi, has fueled decades
of debate, speculation, and, lately, some actual science. Roush
lays out the problem in its historical and modern-day context and
summarizes the latest thinking among astronomers and
astrobiologists. He describes the long history of speculation about
aliens (we've been debating the idea for thousands of years); the
emergence of SETI (the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) as
a scientific discipline in the 1960s, and scientists' use of radio
and optical techniques to scan for signals; and developments in
astrobiology (the study of how life might arise in non-Earth like
environments) and exoplanet research (the discovery of planets
outside our solar system). Finally, he discusses possible solutions
to the Fermi Paradox and suggests way to refocus SETI work that
might increase the chances of resolving the paradox-and finding
extraterrestrials.
Expert science writer Giles Sparrow guides you through 21 stars you
can see in the night sky and what they can teach us about our
universe. On a clear evening, if you look up you can see thousands
of stars shining in the dark sky, each with a story of their own.
Taking 21 stars (and three imposters, that cheekily aren't
technically stars), expert science writer Giles Sparrow offers a
complete introduction to what is happening up in the night sky.
Sparrow draws 'star maps' to help you easily identify the celestial
bodies and then explains (for anyone not an astronomer themselves)
what this particular pinprick of light can tell us about the birth,
life and death of our universe. From red giants, quasars and
supernovae to black holes, multiple stars and even our own Sun,
this fascinating book tells the intriguing, inspiring and sometimes
incredible story of how we came to unravel the mysteries of the
cosmos, and what we learnt along the way. So look up at the sky and
marvel at its wonders with this exciting new book.
Marvel at the wonders of the Universe, from stars and planets to
black holes and nebulae, in this exploration of our Solar System
and beyond. Universe opens with a look at astronomy and the history
of the Universe, using 3D artworks to provide a comprehensive
grounding in the fundamental concepts of astronomy, including the
basic techniques of practical astronomy. The core of the book is a
tour of the cosmos covering the Solar System, the Milky Way, and
galaxies beyond our own. Explanatory pages introduce different
celestial phenomena, such as galaxies, and are followed by
catalogues that profile the most interesting and important
examples. A comprehensive star atlas completes the picture, with
entries on each of the 88 constellations and a monthly sky guide
showing the night sky as it appears throughout the year as viewed
from both the northern and southern hemispheres.
The interstellarum Deep Sky Atlas set a new high standard for
modern celestial cartography. The same team now presents the
interstellarum Deep Sky Guide, its unique observing companion.
Taking an intuitive visual approach, for each spread of the Atlas,
the Guide focuses on carefully selected objects, either as colored
composite POSS plates or through the authors' own eyepiece
sketches. They allow you to estimate the visibility of features in
the telescope while planning observations. Stars and other objects
in the vicinity are highlighted, so they also serve as finder
charts at night. An index map on each spread allows you to quickly
find each object's location in the Atlas. The interstellarum Deep
Sky Guide takes all the hassle out of preparing for observing
sessions - there's no need to print star charts or photos. Simply
grab your Atlas and your Guide, and go observe! This Field Edition
is produced using waterproof materials.
Raphael's Astronomical Ephemeris has been published every year for
well over 100 years. Renowned for its accuracy, it is respected the
world over as the number one portable planetary guide and
aspectarian.
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