Atlas of Astronomical Discoveries

244 Pages·2011·93.58 MB·English

by  Govert Schilling (auth.)

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
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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