Archives of the universe : a treasury of astronomy's historic works of discovery /
Bartusiak, Marcia,1950-
New York : Pantheon Books,
c2004.
Includes bibliographical references (p. [643]-656) and index.
PT. 1. THE ANCIENT SKY. Mayan Venus tables -- Proof that the Earth is a sphere -- Celestial surveying -- Measuring the Earth's circumference -- Precession of the equinoxes -- Ptolemy's Almagest -- PT. 2. REVOLUTIONS. Copernicus and the sun-centered universe -- Tycho Brahe and the changing heavens -- Johannes Kepler and planetary motion -- Galileo initiates the telescopic era -- Newton's universal law of gravity -- Halley's Comet -- Binary stars -- PT. 3. TAKING MEASURE. The speed of light -- The solar system's origin -- Discovery of Uranus -- Stars moving and changing -- The first asteroid -- Distance to a star -- Discovery of Neptune -- The shape of the Milky Way -- Spiraling nebulae -- PT. 4. TOUCHING THE HEAVENS. Spectral lines -- Deciphering the solar spectrum -- Gaseous nebulae -- Doppler shifts and spectroscopic binaries -- Classification of the stars -- Giant stars and dwarf stars -- Hydrogen: the prime element -- Stellar mass, luminosity, and stability -- Sunspot cycle, sun/Earth connection, and helium -- Origins of meteors and shooting stars -- Cosmic rays -- Discovery of Pluto -- PT. 5. EINSTEINIAN COSMOS. Special relativity and E=mc[2] -- General relativity and the solar eclipse test -- Relativistic models of the universe -- Big bang versus steady state -- White dwarf stars -- Beyond the white dwarf -- Supernovae and neutron stars -- Black holes -- Source of stellar power -- Creating elements in the big bang -- Cosmic microwave background predicted -- Creating elements in the stars -- A star's life cycle -- PT. 6. THE MILKY WAY AND BEYOND. Cepheids: the cosmic standard candles -- Sun's place in the Milky Way -- Dark nebulae and interstellar matter -- Discovery of other galaxies -- Expansion of the universe -- Stellar populations and resizing the universe -- Mapping the Milky Way's spiral arms -- Source and composition of comets -- PT. 7. NEW EYES, NEW UNIVERSE. Radio astronomy -- Interstellar hydrogen -- Molecules in space -- Van Allen radiation belts -- Geology of Mars -- Extrasolar x-ray sources -- Quasars -- Evidence for the big bang -- Pulsars -- The infrared sky and the galactic center -- Neutrino astronomy -- Gammay-ray bursts -- Binary pulsar and gravity waves -- PT. 8. ACCELERATING OUTWARD. Dark matter -- Gravitational lensing -- Inflation -- The bubbly universe -- Galaxy evolution and the Hubble Deep Field -- Extrasolar planets -- The accelerating universe.
Astronomy