In Search of Planet Vulcan by Richard Baum and William Sheehan tells the story of the search for a planet inside Mercury's orbit. Although we now know this planet, named Vulcan, doesn't exist, the story of the search is surprisingly entertaining, and well told here.
Out of the Darkness: The Planet Pluto by Clyde Tombaugh and Patrick Moore and
Planets X and Pluto by William Graves Hoyt tell the story of Pluto's discovery. Tombaugh was Pluto's discoverer, and his book has a eloquent beauty to it. Hoyt's is more academic but still quite interesting.
Parallax by Alan Hirshfeld describes the discovery of stellar parallax--determining the distances to stars, which culminated with the successful detection of 61 Cygni's parallax in 1838.
The Alchemy of the Heavens by Ken Croswell emphasizes the recent history (since 1950) of research on the Milky Way and nucleosynthesis. Croswell's book
The Universe at Midnight does the same for cosmology. Croswell interviewed the key astronomers, and both books have highly entertaining quotes from people like Allan Sandage and Fred Hoyle--quotes you won't see anywhere else.
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Crimson on 2002-12-16 08:44 ]</font>
16-December-2002, 01:39 PM
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