Amazon.co.uk Review
Duncan Steel's handsomely produced pocket hardback, illustrated throughout by evocative engravings, illustrations and early photographs, harks back to an era when astronomy was a popular pursuit, and not yet the preserve of computer-laden university departments. It is, essentially, a book of celestial mechanics, using the solar eclipse of August 1999 as a peg from which to hang any number of fascinating astronomical stories: how archaeologists and historians use eclipses to calibrate local calendars; how eclipse cycles can be mapped as woven patterns, revealing their regularity, so that, long before the necessary physical theories were developed, "various individuals of genius, living in societies possessing careful records of past celestial events, were able to interpret those records and deduce the lengths of the years and months to a matter of minutes and seconds"; finally, how findings from eclipses and the occultations of stars by the moon and planets revealed much about the nature of both. There is much of historical, as well as astronomical significance in Duncan Steel's
Eclipse. French astronomer Jules Janssen, for example, in 1870 "was so desperate to get to Algeria to observe an eclipse that he escaped from Paris in a balloon, drifting over the heads of the Prussian troops who had the city under seige". --
Simon Ings
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
NEW SCIENTIST
'...enthralling ... gripping ... an excellent overview of the history and astronomy of the phenomenon'
