The Immortal Fire Within: The Life and Work of Edward Emerson Barnard

by William Sheehan

• ISBN13: 9780521046015
• ISBN10: 0521046017
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-11-05
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This full-length biography of Edward Emerson Barnard, tells the remarkable tale of endurance and achievement of one of the leading astronomers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a 'man who was never known to sleep', Barnard scoured the heavens endlessly, leaving an astonishing legacy of observations - of planets, satellites, comets, double stars, bright and dark nebulae and globular clusters - that make him one of the greatest observers of all time. This book traces Barnard's life from poverty to international recognition. We are told how he grew up fatherless and in hardship during the American Civil War; that he later acquired a small telescope and discovered so many comets that, despite his lack of formal education, he won a position at the Lick Observatory, California. His success as a professional astronomer then unfolds, and we are told, in particular, how he discovered the fifth satellite of Jupiter and pioneered wide-angle photography of comets and the Milky Way.

Table of Contents

Preface

Key to abbreviations in notes

Through rugged ways

Ardent and faithful work with a telescope

Mars; his moons and his heavens

A seeker of comets

Vanderbilt astronomer

In the realm of the nebulae

Go west, young man!

Hanging fire

On Mt. Hamilton

A year of wonders

The young rebel

'I am tired here'

Immortality

Travels and travails

Barnard and Mars

Nature's true artisan

A tide in his affairs

Yerkes observatory

Disappointments and triumphs

The comet and Milky Way photographs

Comet tales

Observer of all that shines - or obscures

Eclipse and decline

Ad astra

Index

Table of Contents provided by Publisher. All Rights Reserved.