Eyes on the sky : a spectrum of telescopes / Francis Graham-Smith.

Astronomy is experiencing a golden age, with a new generation of innovative telescopes yielding a flood of information on the Universe. This book traces the development of telescopes from Galileo to the present day, and explains the basic principles of telescopes that operate in different parts of e...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Graham-Smith, Francis, 1923- (Author)
Format: eBook
Language:English
Published: Oxford, United Kingdom : Oxford University Press, 2016.
Subjects:
Online Access:Click for online access
Table of Contents:
  • Cover; Eyes on the Sky: A Spectrum of Telescopes; Copyright; Preface; Contents; List of Figures; List of Plates; 1: Galileo Opens the Sky; The First Telescope; The Moons of Jupiter; The Next Moves: Kepler; Gregory, Newton, and Herschel; The New Windows; 2: The Big Reflecting Telescopes; Photography; Splitting the Spectrum; Mounting the Monsters; Covering the Sky: the Palomar Schmidt; Bigger and Better; 3: New Ways to Build Big Telescopes; The Altazimuth Mount and Computer Control; Thin Mirrors; Segmented Mirrors; Sharpening the Image; The Big Surveys; The Next Generation.
  • 4: Stretching the Spectrum: Infrared and Ultraviolet TelescopesPhotons and Waves; Photons and Electrons; Arrays and CCDs; The Troublesome Atmosphere; Telescopes for the Infrared; VISTA: a Joint Venture; Putting It All Together; The Infrared Sky; Shorter Wavelengths: the Ultraviolet; 5: Into Space; Rocket Science; The Ultraviolet Sky; The Hubble Space Telescope; The James Webb Space Telescope; IRAS, ISO, Spitzer, Akari, and WISE; Herschel in Orbit; Hipparcos and Gaia; Hunting for Planets; 6: X-Rays from Space; The First Surprises; Honeycombs, Pinholes, and Shadows; X-Ray Mirrors.
  • Chandra and XMM-NewtonThe X-Ray Sky; Swift; X-Ray Prospects: ATHENA; 7: Gamma Rays and Cosmic Rays; Waves and Photons; Gamma-Ray Bursts; AGILE and the Fermi LAT; Picking up the Pulses; Cosmic Rays; Air Showers; Cherenkov Radiation: the Blue Glow; The Flyś Eye; Sorting Out the Showers; 8: The New Radio Window; Radio from the Sky; The First Steerable Dish; Spin-Off from World War II; The Big Dishes at Jodrell Bank; The Big Dish at Parkes; Bigger and Better Dishes; Dishes Looking Upwards; The Biggest Dish; 9: Pairs and Arrays; Michelsonś Interferometer; Analysis and Synthesis.
  • The Cambridge One Mile TelescopeThe Very Large Array; Longer and Longer Baselines; Making the Connection; Into Space with VLBI; 10: Millimetre Waves and Spectral Lines; The Hydrogen and Hydroxyl Lines; More and More Molecules; Millimetre-Wave Telescopes; ALMA; The Gravitational Lens; Herschel and the Infrared; 11: Opening the Cosmos; The Distant Nebulae; Further Back in Time; The Discovery of the Cosmic Microwave Background; The Early Universe: Ripples in the Cosmos; The Fine Structure; Planck: the Supreme Cosmology Spacecraft; Polarization; The Theory of the Cosmos, and Two Puzzles.