Full color reprint of NASA History Office Study of 2007. Illustrated throughout.

"Why is it dark at night?" might seem a fatuous question at first sight. In reality it is an extremely productive question that has been asked from the very beginning of the modern age, not only by astronomers, for whom it is most appropriate, but also by physicists, philosophers, and even poets. The book you have just opened uses this question as a pretext to relate in the most interesting way the history of human thought from the earliest times to the here and now. The point is that if we want to appreciate the magic power of this ostensibly naive question we need to discover how it fits into the wider context of the natural sciences and learn something of the faltering steps towards an answer. In doing so the author guides us through periods that we regard as the dim and distant past. However, as we start reading these passages we are amazed to discover just how searching were the questions the ancient philosophers asked themselves in spite of their fragmentary knowledge of the universe, and how clairvoyantly they were able to gaze into its mysterious structure. The author goes on to explain very graphically how this increasingly prickly question was tackled by many great men of science. It is bound to come as a surprise that it was not a philosopher, a physicist or an astronomer, but instead the poet Edgar Alan Poe, who hinted at the right answer. I know of no other similar publication that has dealt so graphically or so succinctly with a question which, after four centuries of fumbling and chasing up blind alleys, was only solved in our lifetime. Ji i Grygar, president of Czech Learned Society, honorary Chairman of the Czech Astronomical Society

This is the first investigation of one of the main interests of astronomy in Islamic civilization, namely, timekeeping by the sun and stars and the regulation of the astronomically-defined times of Muslim prayer. The study is based on over 500 medieval astronomical manuscripts first identified by the author, now preserved in libraries all over the world and originally from the entire Islamic world from the Maghrib to Central Asia and the Yemen.

The Witness of the Stars stands as one of the best explanations of the constellations in the context of Biblical wisdom. This edition includes all of E. W. Bullinger's original charts and illustrations of the heavens above. To compose this book, E. W. Bullinger used his Biblical scholarship alongside research of the origins of the astronomical constellations. He demonstrates, through a close reading of the Old and New Testaments, how each of the star signs relates to the Bible's stories. Gradually, it is revealed how God makes himself known to us through the Bible's astronomy. The symbolism of the star signs are shown as important in the Bible. Their presence in verse relates not simply to their appearances, such as Libra's scales or Aries as a ram, but also the way in which Biblical figures behave after looking at the heavens for guidance. The Book of Job is highlighted by Bullinger for being significantly influenced by the stars.

With illustrations and photographsp in full color.

Until now, important research on the historical records of comets and meteor showers from China, Japan, and Korea has remained the exclusive preserve of those with expertise in the relevant languages. With a compilation like the present volume the authors hope to ameliorate that situation. Applying the same rigorous selection criteria and style of presentation as in the previous catalogue, assembled and translated here are some 1,500 additional observations of comets and meteor showers from China, Japan, and Korea spanning nearly three millennia. With the publication of this volume, most of the important historical records of East Asian astronomical observations are now accessible in English. The introductions and appendices provide all the required information on specialized terminology, recording conventions, and nomenclature the reader will need to make use of the records. In addition to being an invaluable resource for professional astronomers, East Asian astronomical records have materially aided the research of scholars in fields as diverse as mythology, medieval iconography, ancient chronology, and the oral history of pre-literate societies. The book should be of great interest to cultural astronomers, as well as to those engaged in historical and comparative research.

This book reports on the extraordinary observation of TeV gamma rays from the Crab Pulsar, the most energetic light ever detected from this type of object. It presents detailed information on the painstaking analysis of the unprecedentedly large dataset from the MAGIC telescopes, and comprehensively discusses the implications of pulsed TeV gamma rays for state-of-the-art pulsar emission models. Using these results, the book subsequently explores new testing methodologies for Lorentz Invariance Violation, in terms of a wavelength-dependent speed of light. The book also covers an updated search for Very-High-Energy (VHE), >100 GeV, emissions from millisecond pulsars using the Large Area Telescope on board the Fermi satellite, as well as a study on the promising Pulsar Wind Nebula candidate PSR J0631. The observation of VHE gamma rays is essential to studying the non-thermal sources of radiation in our Universe. Rotating neutron stars, also known as pulsars, are an extreme source class known to emit VHE gamma rays. However, to date only two pulsars have been detected with emissions above 100 GeV, and our understanding of their emission mechanism is still lacking.