BPAA Lecture Series 2002   

Lecture 7

The Great Refractor Race Makes Nebula Less Nebulous

British, German and American Astronomy in the 19th Century

References for this lecture:

The History of the Telescope, Henry C. King, Sky Publishing, 1955. Also available in a Dover edition

Astronomical Instruments and Their Users, Allan Chapman,Variorum, 1996. This is an expensive book but a superb resource.

Astronomical Centers of the World, Kevin Krisciunas, Cambridge, 1988

The Discovery of Our Galaxy, Charles A. Whitney, Knopf, 1971

Moibus and his Band, John Fauvel editor, Oxford, 1993. This contains an excellent article by Allan Chapman giving a summary of the rise of German astronomy in the 19th century and contrasting it to astronomy in England.

Alvan Clark & Sons, Artists in Optics, Deborah Jean Warner, Smithsonian 1995. this is the definitive reference for Clark telescopes.

The Harvard College Observatory, Jones and Boyd, Belknap Press, 1971

The Explorers of Mars Hill, William Lowell Putnam, Lowell Observatory 1994

The Shadow of the Telescope, A Biography of John Herschel, Gunther Buttmann, Scribners 1970

The Neptune File, Tom Standage, Penguin, 2000. This is a popular account of the Neptune discovery controversy.