Mapping the Sky: the Essential Guide to Astronomy.LEILA HADDAD AND ALAIN CIROU This guide is both a visually engaging and a clearly written introduction to reading the night sky with the naked eye, a telescope telescope, traditionally, a system of lenses, mirrors, or both, used to gather light from a distant object and form an image of it. Traditional optical telescopes, which are the subject of this article, also are used to magnify objects on earth and in astronomy; , or binoculars binoculars Optical instrument for providing a magnified view of distant objects, consisting of two similar telescopes, one for each eye, mounted on a single frame. In most binoculars, each telescope has two prisms, which reinvert the inverted image provided by the eyepiece . A broad historical account of how the universe has been understood, explored, and chartedby Greek philosophers, Renaissance sky mappers, Galileo, and Isaac Newton illustrates how observation and theory collaborate. The second half of the book details how to pick the right telescope and how to use it, then unlocks one-by-one the mysteries of the night sky from our solar system solar system, the sun and the surrounding planets, natural satellites, dwarf planets, asteroids, meteoroids, and comets that are bound by its gravity. The sun is by far the most massive part of the solar system, containing almost 99.9% of the system's total mass. to the nebulae of deep space. A star chart is included, as are details of how to photograph one's observations. Originally published in France in 2001. Chronicle chronicle, official record of events, set down in order of occurrence, important to the people of a nation, state, or city. Almanacs, The Congressional Record in the United States, and the Annual Register in England are chronicles. Bks, 2003, 236 p., color photos/illus., flexibind, $24.95. |
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