Astronomy History

A fascinating piece of historical scientific writing, written in 1913 by E. Walter Maunder (F.R.A.S.), the superintendent of the Solar Dept. at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. The book is a snapshot in time showing the evolution of thinking on the solar system and cosmology. The author considers, in fine detail, the plausibility of life on other planets within our solar system, the requirements for such life, and the barriers that life faces.

Noah Adams's adventure in search of Wilbur and Orville Wright is a journey that takes him across the country as he follows in the footsteps of the famous brothers in an attempt to know them more deeply, not just as inventors and pilots but as individuals as well.

Launius places American and Soviet programs on equal footing - following American aerospace engineers Wernher von Braun and Robert Gilruth, their Soviet counterparts Sergei Korolev and Valentin Glushko, and astronaut Buzz Aldrin and cosmonaut Alexei Leonov - to highlight key actions that led to various successes, failures, and ultimately the American Moon landing.

Eclipses have stunned, frightened, emboldened, and mesmerized people for thousands of years. They were recorded on ancient turtle shells discovered in the Wastes of Yin in China, on clay tablets from Mesopotamia and on the Mayan "Dresden Codex". They are mentioned in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and at least eight times in the Bible. Columbus used them to trick people, while Renaissance painter Taddeo Gaddi was blinded by one. Sorcery was banished within the Catholic Church after astrologers used an eclipse to predict a pope's death.

Humans from the earliest civilizations were spellbound by the night sky - craning their necks each night, they used the stars to orient themselves in the large, strange world around them. Stargazing is a pursuit that continues to fascinate us: from Copernicus to Carl Sagan, astronomers throughout history have spent their lives trying to answer the biggest questions in the universe. Now, award-winning astronomer Emily Levesque shares the stories of modern-day stargazers.

The summer of 1969 saw astronauts land on the moon for the first time and hippie hordes descend on Woodstock for a legendary music festival. For Neil M. Maher, the conjunction of these two era-defining events is not entirely coincidental. With its lavishly funded mandate to send a man to the moon, Apollo became a litmus test in the 1960s culture wars.

The latest developments in physics have the potential to radically revise our understanding of the world: its makeup, its evolution, and the fundamental forces that drive its operation. Knocking on Heaven's Door is an exhilarating and accessible overview of these developments and an impassioned argument for the significance of science. There could be no better guide than Lisa Randall.

During the summer of 1969 - the summer Americans first walked on the moon - musician and poet Patti Smith recalled strolling down the Coney Island Boardwalk to a refreshment stand, where "pictures of Jesus, President Kennedy, and the astronauts were taped to the wall behind the register." Such was the zeitgeist in the year of the moon. Yet this holy trinity of 1960s America would quickly fall apart.

Spaceflight is one of the greatest human achievements of the 20th century. The Soviets launched Sputnik, the first satellite, in 1957; less than 12 years later, the American Apollo astronauts landed on the moon.

On January 31, 1961, a three-year-old chimpanzee named Ham made history. Strapped inside a Mercury capsule, the little chimp blasted off into the sky, becoming the first intelligent being to ride an American rocket into suborbital space. Ham made a vital contribution to the United States space program. Because there were so many unanswered questions about space travel, scientists could not risk sending humans on a journey into the unknown. Chimpanzees, however, are very similar to humans in the makeup of their skeletons and internal organs.

As command module pilot of Apollo 17, the last crewed flight to the moon, Ron Evans combined precision flying and painstaking geological observation with moments of delight and enthusiasm. As a patriotic American in charge of command module America, Evans was nicknamed “Captain America” by his fellow crew members.

With the ongoing advancement of AI and other technologies, our world is becoming increasingly intelligent. From chatbots to innovations in brain-computer interfaces to the possibility of superintelligences leading to the Singularity later this century, our reality is being transformed before our eyes. This is commonly seen as the natural result of progress, but what if there's more to it than that? What if intelligence is an inevitability, an underlying property of the universe?

Rockets and Revolution offers a multifaceted study of the race toward space in the first half of the twentieth century, examining how the Russian, European, and American pioneers competed against one another in the early years to acquire the fundamentals of rocket science, engineer simple rockets, and ultimately prepare the path for human spaceflight.

Apollo 15 command module pilot Al Worden was one of the highest-profile personalities among the Apollo astronauts, renowned for his outspokenness and potent views but also recognized as a warm and well-liked person who devoted much of his life after retiring from NASA to sharing his spaceflight experiences.

A fascinating new history of America, told through the stories of a diverse cast of ten extraordinary—and often overlooked—adventurers, from Sacagawea to Matthew Henson to Sally Ride, who pushed the boundaries of discovery and determined our national destiny. ""Brilliantly imaginative...

During the formative years of Egyptian civilization, each Cosmogony was present. Students from many regions and segments of society attended the Houses of Life, and royals regularly donated endowments for the temple's maintenance and activities. These circumstances suggest a theological harmony, suggesting that a group of religious centers must have been cohesive despite their distinctive teachings and practices. Regardless of time or place in popularity, each creation myth was integral to the Egyptians' worldview.

This book includes key presidential speeches on the exploration of space from President Kennedy to President Trump. It includes the fascinating speech that Nixon had written, and subsequently recorded, but fortunately never delivered. The speech was in the event that the Apollo 11 mission did not succeed. Others include Kennedy's bold 1961 speech setting out the goal of sending a man to the moon, which was then achieved within the decade.

Today, the Space Race is widely viewed poignantly and fondly as a race to the Moon that culminated with Apollo 11 “winning” the race for the United States. In fact, it encompassed a much broader range of competition between the Soviet Union and the United States that affected everything from military technology to successfully launching satellites that could land on Mars or orbit other planets in the Solar System.

The Short Story of the Universe is a new introduction to the subject of the universe. Covering 130 key components that make it up - from dwarf galaxies and spiral arms to red giants and the planets of the solar system - and linking these to the universe's structure and the theories that help us understand it, this book simplifies this riveting yet mind-boggling subject, telling the story of how it came into being and how it will eventually be no more.

Thanks to the various components that have been put together, the International Space Station is bigger and brighter than all other artificial satellites. With relatively low power magnification, people can see the solar panels radiating outward from the numerous international modules which make up the ISS. The reality of that platform, at the edge of the ocean of space, is pretty astounding when looked at from the perspective of history. Only 120 years ago, mankind did not know if it was possible to fly in a heavier-than-air vehicle.