Americaâ s First Eclipse Chasers: Stories of Science, Planet Vulcan, Quicksand, and the Railroad Boom (Springer Praxis Books)

Hockey, Thomas

ISBN 10: 3031241231 / ISBN 13: 9783031241239

Editore: Springer (edition 2023), 2023

Riguardo questo articolo

It's a preowned item in good condition and includes all the pages. It may have some general signs of wear and tear, such as markings, highlighting, slight damage to the cover, minimal wear to the binding, etc., but they will not affect the overall reading experience.

Codice articolo 3031241231-11-1

Dati bibliografici

• Titolo: Americaâ s First Eclipse Chasers: Stories of Science, Planet Vulcan, Quicksand, and the Railroad Boom (Springer Praxis Books)
• Editore: Springer (edition 2023)
• Data di pubblicazione: 2023
• Lingua: Inglese
• ISBN 10: 3031241231
• ISBN 13: 9783031241239
• Rilegatura: Paperback
• Edizione: 2023.
• Condizione: Good

Descrizione articolo

Riassunto

In 2017, over 200 million Americans witnessed the spectacular total eclipse of the Sun, and the 2024 eclipse is expected to draw even larger crowds. In anticipation of this upcoming event, this book takes us back in history over 150 years, telling the story of the nation’s first ever eclipse chasers.

Our tale follows the chaotic journeys of scientists and amateur astronomers as they trekked across the western United States to view the rare phenomenon of a total solar eclipse. The fascinating story centers on the expeditions of the 1869 total eclipse, which took place during the turbulent age of the chimerical Planet Vulcan and Civil War Reconstruction.  

The protagonists—a motley crew featuring astronomical giants like Simon Newcomb and pioneering female astronomers like Maria Mitchell—were met with unanticipated dangers, mission-threatening accidents, and eccentric characters only the West could produce. Theirs is a story of astronomical proportions. Along theway, we will make several stops across the booming US railroad network, traveling from viewing sites as familiar as Des Moines, Iowa, to ones as distant and strange as newly acquired Alaska.

From equipment failures and botched preparations to quicksand and apocalyptic ‘comets’, welcome to the wild, western world of solar eclipses.

Informazioni sull?autore

Thomas Hockey received his undergraduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and earned a PhD as New Mexico State University’s first-ever graduate in Astronomy and the History of Astronomy. He is the author or editor of ten books, including the award-winning Biographical Encyclopedia of Astronomers (Springer).

Hockey is a veteran of eight total solar eclipses. He lives between the past and future:  His house is on the path of 1869’s rare, transcontinental, total eclipse, and he looks forward to taking his students to the path of the similar solar eclipse of 2024.