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Shockwave: The Death Of A Star (1954-1961)
News of Hubble’s death rocked the galaxy redshift camp and sent a shockwave through the ranks at Caltech and the Mount Wilson and Palomar...
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Two Centuries Of Astronomical Discovery
The word “horizon” descends from Ancient Greek, its root, horos, meaning “boundary or limitation.” The Greek phrase horizon (kyklos) or “bounding...
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Eclipsing Binaries (1928-1929)
The run of events that led to the practical discovery by Hubble and Humason of universal expansion began with the publication of the first of Albert...
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The Last Horizon (1961-1991)
The premature death of his mentor and hero Edwin Hubble left Allan Sandage the task of sorting out the fine details and unanswered questions from the...
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War: Ultimate Disruptor (1937-1945)
On August 1st, 1936, 22-year-old James Cleveland Owens strode into the Olympic Stadium as a member of the amateur athletics team representing the...
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Aging Companion Stars (1946-1953)
The ghastly toll of war can’t be compensated by any proportional gain in industrial, medical or technological advancement. No war in history had...
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Childhood and Other Mysteries (1889-1909)
On a crisp fall morning, November 14, 1899, as steam hissed from under the massive iron horse at the front of the train waiting to transport him and...
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Evolution of the Earth Through the Ages
Until the late eighteenth century, it was commonly believed that our world has been the same since the time of biblical Creation. By the nineteenth...
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Is the Sun a Star?
After Copernicus removed the idea that the celestial sphere rotates around the Earth once a day, Thomas Digges suggested that there is no need for...
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Resolution of the Theoretical Objections to the Heliocentric Theory
When Copernicus’s Six Books on the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres was published in 1543, he faced a number of theoretical objections to his...
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The Common Links in Our Journey
Among all the living species, humans are the only ones who observe the world and ask questions about how and why. The ability to seek patterns from...
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What Are Stars Made of?
In traditional Greek philosophy, matter on Earth was composed of four basic elements: earth, air, fire, and water. For objects in the heavens,...
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The Nature of Nebulae
In the pre-telescope era, Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe listed approximately 1000 stars in their catalogs. The gradual improvements of telescopes have...
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Origin of Life
The question of the origin of life was probably asked as soon as humans developed self-consciousness. Our ancestors realized very early that plants,...
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Are All Motions Relative?
Celestial objects in our Universe are not static. Much of the early history of astronomy was devoted to the study of motion of the Sun, the Moon, the...
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Size of the Solar System
The first attempt to determine the size of the Solar System was by Ptolemy, who assumed that the Solar System was filled by the epicycles of the...
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Life on Other Worlds
The speculation that there could be extraterrestrial life began soon after Copernicus demoted the Earth to the status of just one of the planets....
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Complexity in the Universe
In Aristotle’s view, celestial objects are simple, pure, and constant, in contrast to the terrestrial environment, which is dirty, complex, and...
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Refining the Preliminary Orbit
The objective in this chapter is to take a preliminary orbit of Mars and refine it until an orbit is found which predicts the right ascensions and...
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The Pioneers of Spectroscopy
The history of spectroscopy involves many talented physicists. Some made significant discoveries, while most provided smaller pieces to the overall...