Reviews for The History of Ptolemy's Star Catalogue

The average rating for The History of Ptolemy's Star Catalogue based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-03-23 00:00:00 Kiera Bracken 18th century comet hunter Charles Messier had a problem. He was finding a number of strange objects that made his comet hunting difficult. In 1774 he published the first edition of his catalog. By the time the final version was published in 1781, the catalog contained 103 objects. The catalog that Messier compiled of nuisance objects turned out to be one of the most important and long lasting catalogs in astronomy. The objects turned out to be various types of nebulea and galaxies. This book takes each one of Messier's Object, identifies it and locates it so that any amatuer with a modest telescope can observe them.

Review # 2 was written on 2021-02-16 00:00:00 Thomas Ernlund I'd forgotten how good this biography of the astronomer, anglophile, snob, cat-lover, and his psuedo-literary wife, was until I reread this book. Hubble is the astronomer most associated with the discovery, in the late 1920s and early 1930s, that the universe is expanding. His main work was done at the Mount Wilson Observatory in California, near Pasadena. I like Hubble the scientist more, his relationship with his mother & siblings, whom he dropped almost all contact with once he became established in science, less