HNY 2009
I came across an interesting book freely published on Project Gutenberg on 1st December 2008, being Sir Robert Stawell Ball's "Story of the Heavens" (1900). This historical book is a great read, and has much to offer on observational astronomy. For its time it was a particularly popular book, and was recommended for its overview of the astronomical knowledge to that time.
I saw a version of this book in the mid-1980's and was impressed then with it thoroughness (knowing it from some other references that referred to this book specifically.)
Perhaps some of the best aspects, mostly to amateur astros, are the many given figures. One of great historical interest is the Pickering's 12th August 1892's photographs of the occultation of Jupiter by the Moon on page 255. (A very first for astrophotography) Also interesting is the comparison of Saturn at present with the drawing of the planet by E.E. Barnard of the 2nd July 1894 (pg.270).
What grabbed me was the section on comets, which gives an interesting treatise on the comets of the 19th Century up until the advent of photography.
The deep-sky stuff is a little naive (the image of M13 in Hercules on pg. 463 is almost hilarious, while the sketch of the Orion nebula pg. 468 shows the outline fairly well - but has some strange features expressing motive rather than factual information.
The figure on Omega Centauri pg.474 is fairly realistic, and is one of the first portrayals of this grand globular.
I'd recommend this book for those interested in such subjects. I'd also be interested in other opinions of what you think of this book.
You can download various versions from Project Gutenberg bibliographic record at; http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/27378
(I suggest downloading the HTML zip version, as the images are accessible individually in a separate folder instead of one huge file.)
Hope this is useful and is interesting enough for IISers...
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Robert Ball's "Story of the Heavens"
