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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 Summer/Winter Sky
Now we will tour the sky as it looks in the evening around June 20. Once again, only those constellations in the central part of the charts are...
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The Winter/Summer Sky
As we approach the December solstice, Figs. 5.1, 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4 depict the night sky around December 20. As usual, only the central part of the...
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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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Going Mainstream: A Scientific Approach c. 1800–1900
Nothing quite like the modern science of astrophysics existed at the time Giovanni Riccioli made his observations of Venus in the first half of the...
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“I Could See the Dark Part of Venus…”
The “canals” of Mars are now viewed as an artifact of the era before the robotic exploration of the Solar System, all evidence for their reality,...
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Seeing What We Want to See: The Psychology of the Ashen Light
The fabled “canals” of Mars (Chap. 1 ), the claim for whose existence is traditionally ascribed to a single...
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Perception Revisited: The Psychophysics of the Ashen Light
Although long thought perhaps the simplest form of mental representation, belief turns out to be a powerful filter through which the human mind...
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A Troubled Childhood
As clocks across Florida struck eight on the last Monday of 1980, a new era began. In the early morning gloom, the doors of the Vehicle Assembly...
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The External Tank
Throughout its career, the Space Shuttle was remorselessly attacked from many angles: from politicians eager to slash NASA’s budget to anti-nuclear...
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A Lifetime of Challenges
Early in November 1984, STS-51A commander Rick Hauck received an unusual meeting request from a senior NASA public affairs official. Hauck was about...
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Hard Road To Wheels Stop
If schedule pressure weighed heavily upon the shoulders of the Shuttle fleet, then the predations of Mother Nature – who routinely manifested her...
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Blowing The Bolts
“John, we can’t do more from the launch team than say, we wish you an awful lot of luck,” radioed Launch Director George Page from the Launch Control...
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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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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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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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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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Grading Reality On A Curve (1932-1934)
The appearance of an expanding universe, revealed for the first time in full practical terms in the joint paper by Hubble and Humason, brought three...