THE STARS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 4, Issue 90, 14 March 1941, Page 15

THE STARS

THE STORY OF ASTRONOMY. By Arthur L. Draper & Marian Lockwood. George Allen and Unwin Ltd., London. OST of us approach the subject of astronomy with awe, or steer clear of it altogether. This book, however, by two curators of the Hayden Planetarium, is something of a revelation. The authors trace their fascinating story from the views of the ancients to our modern conceptions of the nature of the universe, including Einstein’s theory of the abolition of absolute space, but do it all so simply that laymen need have no fears at all. The subjects discussed range from the early theories of the shape and limits of the universe to such topics as meteors, comets, nebulae, star-clusters and sunspots. The arguments for and against the existence of intelligent life on other planets are laid before us, and would-be space travellers are discouraged, at any rate for the present: "We to-day look about us with an easily discernible air of self-congratulation for our own cleverness in understanding the universe, in as far as we do understand it. Then is the moment to remember that we have achieved what understanding we have only by building upon the work and understanding of the consecrated and devoted servants of science who have preceded us." In the very beginning observational astronomy was closely linked with the fictions of astrology, but it was accurately observational, and many conclusions, astonishing even to us, were arrived at. Thales of Miletus, for example, one of the fathers of Greek astronomy, taught that the stars shone by reflected sunlight, that the earth was shaped like a great sphere, that the year contained 365 days, and even succeeded in predicting an eclipse of the sun which occurred in 610 B.C. This is remarkable enough but it is not an isolated case, Almost as remarkable were the observations and conclusions of great thinkers like Pythagoras, Hipparcus, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton and Copernicus. Much of the work of these men was speculative, but the since proven accuracy of many of their theories (with which we are made familiar in these pages), though formulated with the assistance of such crude and elementary instruments, is an amazing tribute to the brilliance and clarity of their thinking. We need only compare Galileo’s "Optick tube,’ which had a magnification of about 4,000 times to realise the handicaps under which the early devotees laboured. The modern astronomer has many ingenious instruments to assist him and the authors explain these and their usesthe spectroscope which translates the "messages of light to enable us to determine the composition of heavenly bodies, the camera which discovers them where the eye fails, and the inferometer which enables diameters. of stars to be measured. We are also shown by means of lucid and interesting description and many fine photographs, as if through the eye-piece of the telescope itself, some of the most amazing phenomena of the heavens — Mars with its "canals," the Moon with its mountains and craters,

and so on. "The Story of Astronomy" should do much to popularise interest in a most fascinating and stimulating subject.