Chasing Venus - Andrea Wulf Kartoniert (TB)

Dieses Buch ist ein faszinierendes und sehr informatives Werk über die Geschichte der Transit von Venus und die Wissenschaft dahinter; ich fand es absolut begeistert!

Dieses Buch ist ein faszinierendes und lehrreiches Werk über die Geschichte der Astronomie und die Suche nach der Messung des Universums. Ich war begeistert von der Art und Weise, wie die Wissenschaftler zusammenarbeiteten, um diese große Frage zu beantworten.

Super!

This book was a lucky find. The scientific aspect was interesting enough but what I really enjoyed was the human aspect, reading about the people who risked (and in some cases lost) their lives to see the tiny black dot of Venus travelling across the sun for a few hours. They had to establish the correct longitude of their respective viewing positions and time the transit of Venus as accurately as possible in order to calculate the distance between the sun and the earth.These men, professionals and aficionados, from different countries, with different backgrounds and, most interestingly, with very different temperaments performed incredible feats of endurance during months or even years to reach their respective viewpoints in both hemispheres. They battled the freezing cold of Siberia and Northern Scandinavia, suffered extreme discomfort and potentially fatal diseases in tropical climates, survived storms and attacks by pirates and enemy ships at sea, lost their equipment or had it broken or stolen and if all that were not daunting enough it was all a race against time to reach their locations, build their makeshift observatories, set up their equipment and preferably be the first and the most accurate for their own glory or that of their nation. There was elation when cloudless skies permitted a total or partial viewing of the transit and crushing disappointment when clouds, rain or fog prevented even a glimpse of the event and it is really interesting to read how each of the observers reacted to these outcomes.For anybody who enjoyed this book I’d like to recommend Robert Whitaker’s “The Mapmaker’s Wife” which is much better than the title may suggest.

Highly recommended reading. Astronomers of the 18th century working together for the advancement of science & knowledge, struggling with long & tiresome journeys to Siberia and South Pacific, withstanding war & weather, and this all for short moments of viewing the Vernus Transits of 1761 and 1769. This book is also a short history of Enlightenment in times, when Europe as an idea was still in the making. No talk of Brexits here.Andrea Wulf knows how to tell a tale, maybe sometimes she fails to add some color to the landscape of her story. But for lovers of astronomy and the history of science this book offers more than a glimpse at the stars of these sciences. A must read even for Europeans and the ones that sometimes consider this political idea obsolete. Europe united is more than money can buy.