Atlas of Astronomical Discoveries PDF
Preview Atlas of Astronomical Discoveries
Atlas of Astronomical Discoveries Govert Schilling Atlas of Astronomical Discoveries Author Govert Schilling Bloemendalsestraat 32 3811 ES Amersfoort Netherlands [email protected] Originally published in 2008 as ‘Atlas van Astronomische Ontdekkingen’ by Fontaine Publishers, The Netherlands Translation: Andy Brown ISBN 978-1-4419-7810-3 e-ISBN 978-1-4419-7811-0 DOI 10.1007/978-1-4419-7811-0 Springer New York Dordrecht Heidelberg London Library of Congress Control Number: 2011922049 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2011 All rights reserved. This work may not be translated or copied in whole or in part without the written permission of the publisher (Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 233 Spring Street, New York, NY 10013, USA), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use in this publication of trade names, trademarks, service marks, and similar terms, even if they are not identified as such, is not to be taken as an expression of opinion as to whether or not they are subject to proprietary rights. While the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of going to press, neither the authors nor the editors nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publisher makes no warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein. Printed on acid-free paper Springer is part of Springer Science+Business Media (www.springer.com) Four hundred years is little more than a blink of an eye in terms of cosmic time. In 400 years the Sun rises nearly 150,000 times, it has been Wednesday 20,000 times, and a Full Moon more than 5,000 times. These are big numbers, but most celestial phenomena evolve much more slowly. The Earth may go around the Sun 400 times in as many years, but Saturn completes less than 14 orbits and Halley’s Comet a little more than 5, while the dwarf planet Eris will have completed only 70% of a single orbit. The night sky hardly changes in 400 years. The fastest moving star in the sky – which is only visible with a telescope – will have moved Preface a little more than 1° further north, and to see any real changes in the shapes of the constellations you need to wait a hundred times lon- ger. In 400 years, the Sun completes less than a millionth of its orbit around the center of the Milky Way. That is like walking around the Place de l’Etoile in Paris and only moving 1.5 mm. Large numbers are the trademark of astronomy, but if we look at it in the right perspective, we see that the universe hardly changes in 400 years. The Sun may convert 50 quadrillion tons of hydrogen into helium in that time, but that is only a trillionth part of its total mass. And although the Andromeda galaxy has moved more than a trillion kilometers closer to the Milky Way, that only means that the light it emits takes a month less to reach us than the two and a half million years that we are used to. In the age of the universe, 400 years is about the same as one minute in the life of an old person. In our Milky Way, a few hundred new stars may have seen the light, and in the vast cosmos with its countless galaxies, a few billion supernovas will have exploded. But generally speaking, the universe looks exactly the same today as it did at the start of the seventeenth century. In that period of time the universe has just blinked. That makes it all the more remarkable when we look at what has changed in our understanding of the universe. From their rather inferior place in space, on a small planet at the edge of a spiral galaxy, astronomers have succeeded in penetrating to the depths of the universe and into the vaults of cosmic history. Our knowledge of the universe has undergone a revolutionary development, largely thanks to the invention of the telescope in 1608. This Atlas of Astronomical Discoveries offers a spectacular review of the past 400 years of telescopic astronomy. In one hundred breathtaking snapshots, it looks at the most important astronomical discoveries since the invention of the telescope. Short texts tell familiar and less well-known stories behind these discoveries – stories of amazement, curiosity, perseverance and luck, but above all, stories of the unstoppable process of unraveling the secrets of the universe in which we all live. In the next 400 years, the cosmos will again change very little. But we are likely to have to wait much less for new revolutionary develop- ments in astronomy. A few orbits of the Sun, at the most. Govert Schilling page 1-4 The Dawn of Astronomy page 5-32 1608 - 1708 New Vistas and Cosmic Laws Mountaineering on the Moon 1609 Children of Jupiter 1610 Tarnished Blazon 1611 Cosmic Order 1619 Blowing in the Solar Wind 1619 Changeable Behavior 1638 Cosmic Hula Hoops 1656 Planet Mapping 1659 Stormy Weather 1664 Planetary Surveyors 1672 Universal Power of Attraction 1687 Recurring Visitors 1705 page 33-52 1708 - 1808 Swarms of Stars on a Three-Dimensional Stage Star Trek 1718 Subtle Swings 1728 Veiled Sister 1761 Fallen Planet 1781 Route du soleil 1783 Deadly Beauty 1790 Celestial Vermin 1801 Rocks from Space 1803 page 53-88 1808 - 1908 Paving the Way for Major Theoretical Breakthroughs Deceptive Lines 1814 Distant Suns 1838 Moving Waves 1842 Inconstant Sun 1843 Swirling Veils 1845 Newton’s Triumph 1846 Enervating Explosions 1859 Stellar Runt 1862 Elementary Puzzles 1868 Fear and Dread 1877 Extraterrestrial Waterways 1877 Celestial Fireworks 1892 Minimum Temperature 1893 Luminous Thunder 1901 Almost Empty 1904 Color Coding 1905 page 89-134 1908 - 1958 A Speck of Cosmic Dust in an Evolving Cosmos Heavenly Messengers 1912 Cosmic Yardstick 1912 Nearest Neighbor 1915 Sprinter in the Night Sky 1916 Galactic Dimensions 1918 Einstein Proved Right 1919 Island Universes 1924 Rotating Disk 1927 Inflated Space 1929 Lilliputian Planet 1930 1931 Galactic Podcast 1932 Invisible Stuff 1933 Terminal Explosions 1937 Near Miss 1938 Sunny Train Ride 1939 Celestial Radio Beacon 1944 Discoveries in Wartime 1944 Veiled Moon 1950 Icy Cloud 1951 Hydrogen Hiss 1957 Elementary Stardust 1958 - 2008 page 135-224 Revolutionary Discoveries in a Mysterious Universe 1958 Cosmic Gathering 1958 Majestic Spiral 1958 Interplanetary Weather 1961 Cosmic Evolution 1962 Penetrating Look 1963 Far-Off Shores 1965 Ancient Light 1965 Radar Revelations 1966 Optical Illusion 1967 Extraterrestrial Beeps 1969 Military Spin-Off 1971 Bright Shell, Black Core 1976 Asymmetric Expansion 1976 Striking Similarity 1977 Hybrid Intruder 1977 Skinny Hoops 1978 Double Planet 1979 Dusty Belt 1979 Sulfurous Surprise 1979 Curved Light 1981 Empty Space 1982 Nervous Beacon 1983 Heat Surplus 1984 Fatal Attraction 1986 Gushing Iceberg 1987 Elongated Galaxies 1987 Mysterious Explosion 1991 Hostile Environment 1992 Baby Photo 1992 Beyond Pluto 1992 Cosmic Nursery 1993 Unsightly Little Moons 1994 Collision Course 1995 Other Worlds 1995 Failed Star 1996 Fossil Remains 1997 Cosmic Fireworks 1998 Accelerating Universe 2004 Wet History 2004 Target Earth 2005 Warrior Princess 2005 Icy Landing 2007 New Earth
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