The night sky has always fascinated artists and scientists, awed by its beauty and perplexed by its meaning. This volume illustrates some of the rarest and most beautiful books in the history of astronomy, drawn from the Huntington Library's collections and supplemented with Hubble Telescope deep field images supplied by NASA and with illuminated manuscripts from the J. Paul Getty Museum. The history of astronomy is marked with observations that failed to conform to philosophical beliefs and with the social, political, and spiritual collisions these inconsistencies brought. The ancient Greeks knew the Earth must dominate the universe, but their observations of irregular planetary movements did not easily confirm their conviction. Nicholas Copernicus, an official of the Catholic Church in Poland, articulated a theory of a heliocentric universe-but he did so cautiously, publishing his work in the year he died in 1543. More than a half-century later, Galileo looked at the Moon through one of the earliest telescopes and used this new perspective to defend the Copernican model, for which he spent the last decade of his life in prison. The copy of Copernicus's "De Revolutionibus" now in the Huntington's collections was once owned by Edwin Hubble, who made extraordinary discoveries 75 years ago while perusing the night skies from California's Mount Wilson Observatory.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
In Star Struck: One Thousand Years of the Art and Science of Astronomy, Ronald Brashear and Daniel Lewis, curators of rare and historical manuscripts, present a history of astronomy replete with galactic maps, illustrated theories of lunar motion, a drawing of Tycho Brahe's "Star Castle," Hubble telescope images, and photographs of the moon's mountain ranges as well as many human luminaries. The beautiful reproductions of artistic and scientific works and the intelligent historical overview will be a joy for professional and lay astronomers.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.From School Library Journal
Adult/High School-This gorgeous title includes the finest in scientific writing, illustrating (more than 150 pictures), and publishing, spanning the earliest copied books to images from the Hubble Space Telescope. Put together by curators from the Smithsonian's Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology and from the Huntington Library, the book is divided into sections on representing the heavens, technologies of observation, and encounters with the planets and outer-space phenomena. Many of the visuals are reproduced as full-page images, making it easier to appreciate the complexity and craftsmanship of early bookmaking, hand illustration, and printing, and also making the original languages of the volumes evident. Although the text is an in-depth overview of astronomy, the out-of-this-world pictures make this book a great introduction to the discipline with particular appeal to nonscientists or science-wary readers.
Sheryl Fowler, Chantilly Regional Library, VA
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
As advertised--Emphasis on historical images,
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This review is from: Star Struck 1000 Years of the Art and Science of Astronomy (Hardcover)
The book is numerous reproductions of astronomical images, with reasonably informative captions, plus a text that briefly covers the high points. Illustrations are grouped by topic, so images of comets (for instance) are all together. The emphasis seems to be on historical images, rather than current ones. Some are arguably not astronomy, such as a series of images showing the days of creation through a Middle Ages mindset. Image reproduction quality is good, and the text is decent, though not brilliant. I'm mildly disappointed that the work of Chesley Bonestell in the mid-20th Century doesn't get featured.
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