“In every field of scientific research, fitful progress is the norm, and comes only after numerous dead ends, backtrackings and wild goose chases that make up 'the flotsam and jetsam of scientific advance'; Baum, a British astronomer ... has put together a fascinating collection of this outmoded ephemera in this alternate history of science, populated by the famous and the forgotten....Baum helps contemporary readers understand why observations were interpreted as they were, and how centuries-old records still have value today...for amateur and professional astronomers, and those interested in the history of science, the gems contained here are worth the effort.”
-Publishers Weekly
"As a wordsmith of the first magnitude, Baum has produced both an authoritative and fascinating compilation distilled from the annals of astronomy, and in so doing has derived new insights into mysteries of the past. A book to be savored, chapter by chapter!"
-Dr. Richard Miles
President of the British Astronomical Association
For many centuries observers of the night sky interpreted the moving planets and the surrounding starry realms in terms of concentric crystalline spheres, in the center of which hung the Earth — the hub of creation. But with the discoveries of Galileo, Copernicus, Kepler, and Newton, astronomers were suddenly struck by a momentous truth: the solar system was neither small nor intimate, but extended an unfathomable distance toward countless even more distant stars. The endless possibilities of these astounding developments fired scientists’ imaginations, leading both to further discoveries and to flights of fancy.
While newly discovered facts are important and interesting, the quaint curiosities and spectral “ghosts” that led scientists astray have a fascination of their own. This is the subject of astronomer Richard Baum in this elegant narrative about the mysteries and wonders of celestial exploration. The fabled “mountains of Venus,” a “city in the moon,” ghostly rings around Uranus and Neptune, bright inexplicable objects seen near the sun, and the truth behind Coleridge’s “Star dogged Moon” in his famous poem about the Ancient Mariner — these are just some of the intriguing twists and turns that astronomers took while investigating our starry neighbors.
Baum vividly conveys the romance of astronomy at a time when the vistas of outer space were a new frontier and astronomers, guided only by imagination and analogy, set forth on uncharted seas and were haunted for a lifetime by marvels both seen and imagined.
Further Praise for The Haunted Observatory
"Every time Richard Baum opens astronomy's closet, unexpected and dubious relics come tumbling out. Baum's haunting review of false trails and aberrant observations is, however, much more than a slate of astronomical anecdotes. He expertly referees the contest between perception and expectation and reminds us we still sometimes shadowbox with phantoms."
-E.C. Krupp
Director, Griffith Observatory
“Written with a storyteller’s gift for historical narrative, filled with fascinating information not readily available elsewhere, and showing a keen sensitivity to the delicacy of astronomical observation, Richard Baum’s
The Haunted Observatory will surprise, delight, and inform."
-Michael J. Crowe
Cavanaugh Professor Emeritus, University of Notre Dame
Author of The Extraterrestrial Life Debate 1750–1900
"Richard Baum has a great knack for finding forgotten episodes in the history of astronomy, unearthing many more details about them, and then retelling these stories so as to reveal their surprising significance. This is a fascinating book."
-Robert Smith
Lindbergh Chair 2007, National Air and Space Museum
Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
Book Binding: Hardcover
Pages: 416
ISBN: 1-59102-512-5
Shipping Weight: 1lbs
Author Bio:
Richard Baum (Chester, England) is the director emeritus of the Terrestrial Planets Section and Mercury and Venus Section of the British Astronomical Association. A 2005 recipient of the Walter H. Haas Annual Award of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers, he is the author of the acclaimed In Search of Planet Vulcan (with William Sheehan). He is also the recipient of the prestigious Walter Goodacre Medal and the Lydia A. Brown Medal of the British Astronomical Association. The International Astronomical Union named minor planet 7966 after him.
