Space telescopes are among humankinds greatest scientific achievements of the last fifty years. This book describes the instruments themselves and what they were designed to discover about the Solar System and distant stars. Exactly how these telescopes were built and launched and the data they provided is explored.
Only certain kinds of radiation can penetrate our planet's atmosphere, which limits what we can observe. But with space telescopes all this changed. We now have the means to see beyond Earth using ultraviolet, microwave, and infrared rays, X-rays and gamma rays.
In this book we meet the pioneers and the telescopes that were built around their ideas. This book looks at space telescopes not simply chronologically but also in order of the electromagnetic spectrum, making it possible to understand better why they were made.
English, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, takes the reader through an exploration of the discovery of the various spectrums, compositely the electromagnetic spectrum, which is used to study the cosmos through telescopes. & this book is filled with fun information about the science and technology utilized to study the past and prepare for the future. Summing Up: Recommended. All readers. (R. I. Saltz, Choice, Vol. 57 (11), July, 2017)
Dr. Neil English is an Irish citizen with a BSc in Physics & Astronomy, and also a PhD in Biochemistry. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, and a regular contributor to Astronomy Now (the UKs major astronomy magazine), as well as to Ireland's Astronomy & Space. Dr. Englishs astronomical images have been published in various magazines and journals, including a full page in the June 2lC[