Books
The following is a selection of books that may be of interest to our members and amateur astronomers in general. Some have been written by visitors to the society, all have been read and enjoyed by a number of our members. They are available for purchase, via Amazon.co.uk. Every purchase made is backed by the Amazon Security Guarantee.
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After the First Three Minutes – Thanu Padmanabhan How does our universe evolve? How did structures like stars and galaxies form? Scientists' understanding of these profound questions has developed enormously. This book presents a detailed picture of contemporary cosmology for the general reader. It introduces all the relevant background and then pieces together a story of the evolution of our universe. We are left with a picture of scientists' current understanding in cosmology Throughout, no mathematics is used; and all technical jargon is clearly introduced and reinforced in a glossary at the end of the book. |
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Astrophotography for the Amateur – Michael A. Covington Astrophotography for the Amateur provides an introduction for beginners and a useful handbook for advanced amateurs. It should also appeal to photography enthusiasts who can discover how to take excellent images with only modest equipment. |
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Bubbles, Voids and Bumps in Time: the New Cosmology – J. Cornell In the last decade, advances made in observational instruments and computational techniques have allowed astronomers to look both deeper into space, and by implication, further back into time to construct new scenarios for the probable beginning and possible end of the cosmos. Ironically, each new discovery, while revealing intricate details, has also posed new questions. People have always speculated on the nature of the universe, pondering its origin, evolution and eventual fate. In this volume, six cosmologists provide a current "state of the universe" report: what we have learned about its nature - but also what pieces are still missing from the cosmic puzzle. |
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The End of Time – Julian Barbour The End of Time is a fascinating contribution to physics by a scholar and thinker who is taken seriously by physicists of the calibre of Wheeler and Smolin. But he has pursued a career outside the mainstream, living on a farm and refusing to get involved in traditional teaching and research. He argues that time is a purely local phenomenon, a way of seeing things, rather than something that actually meaningfully exists at the core of the universe. This consists of a vast agglomeration of Nows, single moments whose relationship with each other is intimate, but not intrinsically one of causation. |
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Extrasolar Planets – the Search for New Worlds – Stuart Clark Extrasolar planets are planetary-sized bodies which have been discovered orbiting stars, similar to the Sun. This text covers the detection and discovery of planetary-sized bodies, concentrating on techniques and the results of observational searches to date, supported by basic theory. |
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The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe – Steven Weinberg Featuring a new epilogue that brings the story up to date, this work by the 1979 Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Steven Weinberg, marshalls all the evidence to examine what happened when the universe began, and how do we know? |
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Just Six Numbers – Martin Rees How did a single 'genesis event' create billions of galaxies, black holes, stars and planets? How did atoms assemble -- here on Earth, and perhaps on other worlds -- into living beings intricate enough to ponder their origins? This book describes the recent avalanche of discoveries about the universe's fundamental laws, and the deep connections that exist between stars and atoms -- the cosmos and the microscopic world. Just six numbers, imprinted in the 'big bang', determine the essence of our world, and this book devotes one chapter to explaining each. |
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The Magic Furnace – Marcus Chown One of the greatest detective stories in the history of science reveals how astronomers and nuclear physicists deduced where the elements in our bodies come from. It is both the story of atoms and the story of stars. |
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Mendeleyev's Dream – Paul Strathern In this book, Paul Strathern, the award-winning novelist and expositor of complex ideas, unravels the dramatic history of chemistry through the quest for the elements. Framing this history is the life-story of the 19th century Russian scientist Dmitri Mendeleyev, who fell asleep at this desk and awoke after dreaming of the Periodic Table - the template upon which modern chemistry is founded, and the formulation of which marked chemistry's coming of age as a science. From ancient philosophy, through medieval alchemy to the splitting of the atom, this is the true story of the birth of chemistry and the role of one man's dream. |
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Practical Amateur Spectroscopy – Stephen F. Tonkin Spectroscopy provides information about the age, composition, distance, expansion or contraction, ionisation level, line-of-sight velocity, lumiosity, mass, rotational velocity and temperature of an astronomical object. This guide to practical spectroscopy hopes to serve as an introduction to this aspects of amateur astronomy. |
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In Search of Schrödinger's Cat – John Gribbin Quantum theory is so shocking that Einstein could not bring himself to accept it. It is so important that it provides the fundamental underpinning of all modern sciences. Without it, we'd have no nuclear power or nuclear weapons, no TV, no computers, no science of molecular biology, no understanding of DNA, no genetic engineering. In Search of Schrödinger's Cat is a fascinating and delightful introduction to the strange world of the quantum - an essential element in understanding today's world. |
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Spaceship Neutrino – Christine Sutton, Fred Reine Spaceship Neutrino charts the history of the neutrino from its beginnings in the 1930s to its crucial role in modern theories of the Universe. Christine Sutton is well known for her popular science writing. In this book she describes how the detection and measurement of neutrino properties have tested technology to its limits, requiring huge detectors, often located deep in mines, under mountains or even under the sea. |
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Sundials: History, Theory, and Practice – Rene R. J. Rohr Recounts the history of the development and proliferation of sundials, and reviews basic concepts of cosmology necessary for their design. Describes different types of devices, including rare and complex dials, lists popular sundial mottoes, and provides instructions for building a sundial. |
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Surely You're Joking, Mr Feynman – Richard P. Feynman Winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1965, Richard Feynman was also a man who fell, often jumped, into adventure - as artist, safe-cracker, practical joker and storyteller. Over a period of years, Feynman's conversations with his friend Ralph Leighton were first taped and then set down as they appear in this book, little changed from their spoken form, to give a self-portrait of a remarkable man. |
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The Universe Next Door – Marcus Chown In his work as Cosmology Consultant for New Scientist magazine, Marcus Chown often comes across mind-blowing ideas and in The Universe Next Door he explores 12 of the most extraordinary. He delves into regions of space where time travels backwards, the possibility that the many worlds theorem implies that we can live forever and invisible mirror-matter interacting with ours only via gravity. |
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The Whole Shebang: A State-Of-The-Universe(s) Report – Timothy Ferris A non-technical account of recent astronomical research makes all that is known about the universe accessible to the average reader, in a study that integrates scientific personalities with hard facts, vivid explanations, and authoritative speculation. |