Shrouds of the Night is a book from the astronomy genre.
The book was written at the Mount Stromlo Observatory in 2007 by David Block and Ken Freeman. It is a timetable of astronomical photography from 1826 to the present day. [1]
Much of the content of this book is published here for the first time. Two examples of this are: one from Arizona's Lowell Observatory and another from the Royal Astronomical Society of London. [2]
Amateur astronomy is a hobby where participants enjoy observing or imaging celestial objects in the sky using the unaided eye, binoculars, or telescopes. Even though scientific research may not be their primary goal, some amateur astronomers make contributions in doing citizen science, such as by monitoring variable stars, double stars, sunspots, or occultations of stars by the Moon or asteroids, or by discovering transient astronomical events, such as comets, galactic novae or supernovae in other galaxies.
The Kitt Peak National Observatory (KPNO) is a United States astronomical observatory located on Kitt Peak of the Quinlan Mountains in the Arizona-Sonoran Desert on the Tohono Oʼodham Nation, 88 kilometers (55 mi) west-southwest of Tucson, Arizona. With more than twenty optical and two radio telescopes, it is one of the largest gatherings of astronomical instruments in the Earth's northern hemisphere.
A space telescope is a telescope in outer space used to observe astronomical objects. Suggested by Lyman Spitzer in 1946, the first operational telescopes were the American Orbiting Astronomical Observatory, OAO-2 launched in 1968, and the Soviet Orion 1 ultraviolet telescope aboard space station Salyut 1 in 1971. Space telescopes avoid several problems caused by the atmosphere, including the absorption or scattering of certain wavelengths of light, obstruction by clouds, and distortions due to atmospheric refraction such as twinkling. Space telescopes can also observe dim objects during the daytime, and they avoid light pollution which ground-based observatories encounter. They are divided into two types: Satellites which map the entire sky, and satellites which focus on selected astronomical objects or parts of the sky and beyond. Space telescopes are distinct from Earth imaging satellites, which point toward Earth for satellite imaging, applied for weather analysis, espionage, and other types of information gathering.
John Flamsteed was an English astronomer and the first Astronomer Royal. His main achievements were the preparation of a 3,000-star catalogue, Catalogus Britannicus, and a star atlas called Atlas Coelestis, both published posthumously. He also made the first recorded observations of Uranus, although he mistakenly catalogued it as a star, and he laid the foundation stone for the Royal Greenwich Observatory.
An observatory is a location used for observing terrestrial, marine, or celestial events. Astronomy, climatology/meteorology, geophysics, oceanography and volcanology are examples of disciplines for which observatories have been constructed.
The Adler Planetarium is a public museum in Chicago, Illinois, dedicated to astronomy and astrophysics. It was founded in 1930 by local businessman Max Adler. Located on the northeastern tip of Northerly Island on Lake Michigan, the Adler Planetarium was the first planetarium in the United States. It is part of Chicago's Museum Campus, which includes the John G. Shedd Aquarium and The Field Museum. The Planetarium's mission is to inspire exploration and understanding of the universe.
Helen Battles Sawyer Hogg was an American-Canadian astronomer who pioneered research into globular clusters and variable stars. She was the first female president of several astronomical organizations and a scientist when many universities would not award scientific degrees to women. Her scientific advocacy and journalism included astronomy columns in the Toronto Star and the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. She was considered a "great scientist and a gracious person" over a career of sixty years.
Palomar Observatory is an astronomical research observatory in the Palomar Mountains of San Diego County, California, United States. It is owned and operated by the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Research time at the observatory is granted to Caltech and its research partners, which include the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Yale University, and the National Astronomical Observatories of China.
The Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) is an American scientific and educational organization, founded in San Francisco on February 7, 1889, immediately following the solar eclipse of January 1, 1889. Its name derives from its origins on the Pacific Coast, but today it has members all over the country and the world. It has the legal status of a nonprofit organization.
The Haleakalā Observatory, also known as the Haleakalā High Altitude Observatory Site, is Hawaii's first astronomical research observatory. It is located on the island of Maui and is owned by the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Hawaiʻi, which operates some of the facilities on the site and leases portions to other organizations. Tenants include the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network (LCOGTN). At over 3,050 meters (10,010 ft) in altitude, the summit of Haleakalā is above one third of the Earths's troposphere and has excellent astronomical seeing conditions.
The Indian Astronomical Observatory (IAO) is a high-altitude astronomy station located in Hanle, India and operated by the Indian Institute of Astrophysics. Situated in the Western Himalayas at an elevation of 4,500 meters (14,764 ft), the IAO is one of the world's highest located sites for optical, infrared and gamma-ray telescopes. It is currently the tenth highest optical telescope in the world.
Delta Cancri is a double star about 140 light-years from the Sun in the constellation of Cancer.
The Calar Alto Observatory is an astronomical observatory located in Almería province in Spain on Calar Alto, a 2,168-meter-high (7,113 ft) mountain in the Sierra de Los Filabres subrange of the Sierra Nevada.
The Astronomical Observatory of Capodimonte is the Neapolitan department of Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, the most important Italian institution promoting, developing and conducting scientific research in the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, and space science.
Medieval Islamic astronomy comprises the astronomical developments made in the Islamic world, particularly during the Islamic Golden Age, and mostly written in the Arabic language. These developments mostly took place in the Middle East, Central Asia, Al-Andalus, and North Africa, and later in the Far East and India. It closely parallels the genesis of other Islamic sciences in its assimilation of foreign material and the amalgamation of the disparate elements of that material to create a science with Islamic characteristics. These included Greek, Sassanid, and Indian works in particular, which were translated and built upon.
Fuertes Observatory is an astronomical observatory located on the North Campus of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. The observatory was designed by L.P. Burnham, Cornell Professor of Architecture and completed in fall of 1917. It was originally used by the Civil Engineering Department as an instructional field office for navigation and surveying. Today, the observatory is primarily used for public outreach, welcoming over two thousand visitors per year with open houses on clear Friday nights.
Nicholas Szymanek, better known as Nik Szymanek, is a British amateur astronomer and prolific astrophotographer, based in Essex, England.
The Canopus Hill Observatory, located approximately 12 km from Hobart in Tasmania, Australia, is an optical astronomy observatory belonging to the University of Tasmania (UTAS). Due to the high southern latitude, the Canopus Hill Observatory is able to observe and study the Magellanic Clouds. However, the observatory has closed down due to the "encroaching light pollution from the Hobart suburbs". According to the Astronomical Society, light pollution reduces the vision of the night sky, becoming a "major menace to amateur and professional astronomers alike".
John Henry Reynolds (1874–1949) was a British astronomer who served as the president of the Royal Astronomical Society between 1935 and 1937 and is known for his work on the classification of stellar bodies. An amateur, he was the son of Alfred John Reynolds, the Lord Mayor of Birmingham, who owned a company which cut nails. In 1899, at age 25, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and in 1907, he financed the construction of a 30-inch reflecting telescope in Helwan, Egypt, the first large telescope to study objects in the such southerly skies. He also hand-constructed a 28-inch telescope in Harborne. Images from the Reynolds telescope was later used by Gérard de Vaucouleurs in his system of classifying galaxies; Reynolds also published his own classification for spiral galaxies in 1920. Edwin Hubble frequently corresponded with Reynolds, and some of his findings into the classification of stellar bodies seems at least inspired by his work. The Hubble–Reynolds law, a formula for measuring the surface brightness of elliptical galaxies, is named after them.
Tenagra Observatory and Tenagra Observatory II are astronomical observatories in Cottage Grove, Oregon and Arizona. The observatories house heavily automated robotic telescopes.