The Astronomy Book: Big Ideas Simply Explained Ebook Rar
Tamar Rochon
The Astronomy Book is the perfect introduction to the story of our ideas about space, time, and the physics of the cosmos, aimed at adults with an interest in the subject and students wanting to gain more of an overview. Here you'll discover more than 100 of the most important theories and discoveries in the history of astronomy and the great minds behind them. If you've ever wondered about the key ideas that underpin the wonders of the universe and the great minds who uncovered them, this is the perfect book for you.
An essential guide to milestone developments in astronomy, telling the story of our ideas about space, time, and the physics of the cosmos-from ancient times to the present day.
From planets and stars to black holes and the Big Bang, take a journey through the wonders of the universe. Featuring topics from the Copernican Revolution to the mind-boggling theories of recent science, The Astronomy Book uses flowcharts, graphics, and illustrations to help clarify hard-to-grasp concepts and explain almost 100 big astronomical ideas. Covering the biographies of key astronomers through the ages such as Ptolemy, Galileo, Newton, Hubble, and Hawking, The Astronomy Book details their theories and discoveries in a user-friendly format to make the information accessible and easy to follow.
Series Overview: Big Ideas Simply Explained series uses creative design and innovative graphics along with straightforward and engaging writing to make complex subjects easier to understand. With over 7 million copies worldwide sold to date, these award-winning books provide just the information needed for students, families, or anyone interested in concise, thought-provoking refreshers on a single subject.
It is more likely that they brought the lunar month with them,taking it roughly as 30 days (30 12 = 360), than that theybegan with such an erroneous notion of the true length of thesolar year, seeing that in Egypt, above all countries in theworld, owing to the regularity of the inundation, the truelength could have been so easily determined, so soon as thatregularity was recognised. We must not in these questionsforget to put ourselves in the place of these pioneers ofastronomy and civilisation; if we do this, we shall soon seehow many difficulties were involved in determining the truelength of such a cycle as a year, when not only modernappliances, but all just ideas too, were of necessity lacking.
What we have to do in the present chapter is to see whetherthe orientation of the structures helps us with any suggestionstouching the question whether we have to stop at the placesnamed and acknowledge Egypt to be the true cradle of astronomicalscience; or whether the facts we have considered compelus to go a stage further back, and to recognise that the trueorigin was elsewhere; that, in short, astronomy, instead oftaking its rise in Egypt, was simply imported thither.
"We have already above (p. 90) attempted to explain thestriking phenomenon that the Bull and Pegasus, both with half-bodiesonly, ἡμίτομοι, enclose the Ram between them, by theassumption that the latter was interposed later, when thesun at the time of the vernal equinox was in the hind parts 401of the Bull, so that this point was no longer sufficiently markedin the sky. Another matter susceptible of a like explanationmay be noted in the region of the sky opposite to the Ramand the Bull. Although we cannot doubt the existence of aneastern balance, still, as already remarked (p. 68), theGreeks have often called it χηλαὶ 'claws' (of the Scorpion),and according to what has been said above (p. 312), the signfor a constellation in the neighbourhood of our Libra reads inthe Arsacid inscription 'claw(s)' of the Scorpion. These factsare very simply explained on the supposition that the Scorpionoriginally extended into the region of the Balance, and thatoriginally α and β Libræ represented the 'horns' of theScorpion, but later on, when the autumnal equinox coincidedwith them, the term Balance was applied to them. Althoughthis was used as an additional name, it was only natural thatthe old term should still be used as an equivalent. But italso indicates the great age of a portion of the zodiac."