A Concise History of Solar and Stellar PhysicsPrinceton University Press, 2014 M11 28 - 304 pages This book provides a comprehensive overview of the history of ideas about the sun and the stars, from antiquity to modern times. Two theoretical astrophysicists who have been active in the field since the early 1960s tell the story in fluent prose. About half of the book covers most of the theoretical research done from 1940 to the close of the twentieth century, a large body of work that has to date been little explored by historians. |
From inside the book
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... observed positions of each heavenly body. In this representation, twenty-seven spheres in all were considered sufficient: three each for the sun and moon, four for each of the five planets, and one for the fixed stars. Further ...
... observed.) He therefore concluded that the stars and planets were selfluminous, and that the moon was unique among heavenly bodies in being the only one that borrowed its light from the sun.16 The Persian physician and philosopher Ibn ...
... observed a new star and, failing to detect parallax in his observations, he correctly deduced that it was located well beyond the planets. The star's eighteen-month life span left a considerable impact since it cast serious doubt on the ...
... observations made in the 1610s, Galileo added to this a picture of celestial bodies that exhibited surface irregularities: the moon, whose mountains and valleys made it akin to the earth; and the sun, whose spots continually changed in ...
... observed phenomena.20 What Newton brought to the subject is to be found in the simplicity that his laws of motion combined with the principle of gravitational attraction were able to introduce into the description of planetary orbits ...
Contents
1 | |
16101910 | 29 |
18401910 | 66 |
19101940 | 94 |
19401970 | 133 |
1970 | 192 |
Epilogue | 247 |
Appendix A Lanes Fully Convective Gas Spheres | 250 |
Appendix C Ritters Theory of Pulsating Stars | 252 |
Appendix D Radial and Nonradial Stellar Pulsations | 254 |
Appendix E Bohrs Model of the Atom | 257 |
Appendix F Einsteins MassEnergy Relation | 260 |
Appendix G Three Important Nuclear Reactions | 263 |
General Bibliography | 265 |
Index of Names | 269 |
Index of Subjects | 277 |
Other editions - View all
A Concise History of Solar and Stellar Physics Jean-Louis Tassoul,Monique Tassoul Limited preview - 2014 |
A Concise History of Solar and Stellar Physics Jean Louis Tassoul,Monique Tassoul Limited preview - 2004 |