Celestial Treasury
From the Music of the Spheres to the Conquest of Space
Published on 16. July 2001
Book
Hardback
217 pages
978-0-521-80040-2 (ISBN)
Description
Throughout history, the mysterious dark skies above us have inspired our imaginations in countless ways, influencing our endeavours in science and philosophy, religion, literature and art. Celestial Treasury is a truly beautiful book showing the richness of astronomical theories and illustrations in Western civilization through the ages, exploring their evolution, and comparing ancient and modern throughout. From Greek verse, mediaeval manuscripts and Victorian poetry to spacecraft photographs and computer-generated star charts, the unprecedented wealth of these portrayals is quite breathtaking. How did philosophers and scientists try to explain the order which seems to govern celestial motion? How did geometers and artists measure and map the skies? How many different answers have been proposed for the most fundamental of all questions: When and how did our world come about? Who inhabits the Heavens - gods, angels or extraterrestrials? The answers to these questions can be found among these stunning pages.
Reviews / Votes
'Impressive in size and sumptuous in production ... a stunning array of historical and modern imagery ... A book that anybody with the slightest interest in the subject would be delighted to find waiting after the annual visit of the red-coated gentleman with the suborbital reindeer!' P. D. Highley, Astronomy & Geophysics '... a fascinating combination of ancient star maps and illustrations, mixed with modern photographs and computer-generated images of the cosmos.' Astronomy Now 'The artwork for this book is truly beautiful and the accompanying text is literature and thought provoking ... an outstanding record of what was probably a remarkable exhibition.' Martin Barstow, The ObservatoryMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Illustrations
380 Plates, color
Dimensions
Height: 373 mm
Width: 273 mm
Thickness: 23 mm
Weight
1829 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-521-80040-2 (9780521800402)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Marc Lachieze-Rey is a director of research at the Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique and astrophysicist at the Centre d'Etudes de Saclay. He is the author of the The Cosmic Background Radiation (1999), and Cosmology: A First Course (1995), both published by Cambridge University Press, and The Quest for Unity published by Oxford University Press (1999), as well as many books in French. Jean-Pierre Luminet is a research director of the Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique, based at the Paris-Meudon observatory. In addition to many research papers in cosmology, the structure of space-time and relativistic astrophysics, he has written several popular science articles and books (including Black Holes, Cambridge University Press, 1992), as well as science documentaries for television. Beyond his outstanding scientific research, he is also a renowned expert in the history of cosmology, and astronomical art and poetry. His first novel, Le rendez-vous de Venus, was published in 1999 by JC Lattes.
Content
Part I. Celestial Harmony: 1. Geometry and the cosmos; 2. The celestial hierarchy; 3. The grandeur of space; 4. Finite or infinite?; 5. The structure of the world; 6. Celestial music; 7. World systems; Part II. Uranometry: 8. Mapping the sky; 9. Naming the stars; 10. The development of celestial atlases; 11. The depths of space; Part III. The Creation: 12. From myth to myth; 13. The metamorphosis of chaos; 14. Time and creation; 15. The Creator; 16. The order of creation; 17. The date of creation; 18. The theory of evolution; 19. The Big Bang; 20. A modern creation; Part IV. Creatures of the Sky: 21. Humanity beneath the sky; 22. The sky in humanity; 23. Humanity in the sky; 24. The worlds in the sky.