Eyes on the Sky : A Spectrum of Telescopes

Four Centuries Ago, Galileo First Turned A Telescope To Look Up At The Night Sky. His Discoveries Opened The Cosmos, Revealing The Geometry And Dynamics Of The Solar System. Today's Telescopic Equipment, Stretching Over The Whole Spectrum From Visible Light To Radio And Millimetre Astronomy, Through Infrared To Ultraviolet, X-rays And Gamma Rays, Has Again Transformed Our Understanding Of The Whole Universe. In This Book Francis Graham-smith Explains How This Technology Can Be Engaged To Give Us A More In-depth Picture Of The Nature Of The Universe. Looking At Both Ground-based Telescopes And Telescopes On Spacecraft, He Analyses Their Major Discoveries, From Planets And Pulsars To Cosmology. Large Research Teams And Massive Data Handling Are Necessary, But The Excitement Of Discovery Is Increasingly Shared By A Growing Public, Who Can Even Join In Some Of The Analysis By Remote Computer Techniques. Observational Astronomy Has Become International. All Major Projects Are Now Partnerships; Most Notably The Square Kilometre Array, Which Will Involve Astronomers From Over 100 Countries And Will Physically Exist In Several Of Them. Covering The History And Development Of Telescopes From Galileo To The Present Day, Eyes On The Sky Traces What Happens When Humankind Looks Up.--goodreads.com. Galileo Opens The Sky -- The Big Reflecting Telescopes -- New Ways To Build Big Telescopes -- Stretching The Spectrum : Infrared And Ultraviolet Telescopes -- Into Space -- X-rays From Space -- Gamma Rays And Cosmic Rays -- The New Radio Window -- Pairs And Arrays -- Millimetre Waves And Spectral Lines -- Opening The Cosmos -- Then, Now, And Tomorrow. Francis Graham-smith. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. 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 Telescopes Photons 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-Newton The 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 Fly ́s 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 Michelson ́s Interferometer Analysis and Synthesis The Cambridge One Mile Telescope The 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 The Young Universe Develops Where Next with Cosmology? 12: Then, Now, and Tomorrow The Major Telescopes Today Multibeam Synthesis Projects and Prospects The Square Kilometre Array Astronomy Transformed Notes Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter10 Chapter11 Further Reading Index 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 electromagnetic spectrum.