A must read!

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Buzzygirl
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Joined: Mon May 17, 2004 7:58 pm
Real Name: Jackie LaVaque
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A must read!

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If you are looking for an astronomy-related book to pass the cloudy nights, check out "Stargazer: the Life and Times of the Telescope" by Fred Watson. Written in a friendly, folksy style, it's chock-full of information about various types of telescopes, their inventors and the history of their times.

A couple of the book's revelations were surprising. For instance, I didn't know that a lawyer named Chester Moor Hall actually invented the first achromatic doublet lens, years before John Dollond started making them. Chester Hall was a lawyer by trade, and dabbled in optics merely as a hobby. He tested his new lens and found that it worked to dramatically cut chromatic aberration, but he had no intention of making more of the doublets. He then gave his creation to an uninterested optician, who promptly set it aside.

Laurent Cassegrain was a French priest from Chartres that came up with the design of the classical Cassegrain telescope, but he never actually built one. His contemporary, Isaac Newton, challenged him to build the telescope, but realizing the technology to make decent mirrors was sorely lacking in that day, he never did, and he back sank into obscurity... so much so, that Cassegrain's first name was lost to history until the mid-20th century!

This book is a must-have for amateur astronomers. I'm reading a library copy now, but I intend to buy a copy soon.
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