Art & Archaeology from Astronomy!
The
Some astronomical drawings from the IoA Library have recently been on exhibition.
AMI/3/B
Lunar crater Eratosthenes
drawn by Henry Holiday
on
Henry Holiday (1839-1927) was a professional artist, perhaps best known for the painting Dante and Beatrice (1884) and for his illustrations for Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark (1876).
The drawings came to our attention in the
Library as archaeologists uncovered the foundations of the Newall
dome on the site of the Kavli Institute for Cosmology. The Newall
Telescope (a 25inch refractor) was built by Thomas Cooke of York for
industrialist R.S.
Newall (1812-1889) the telescope was first
installed at Newall’s home in
The telescope and its dome came to
For the IoA Open Afternoon (on 15 March 2008) the Library mounted a display entitled 'A Monster Telescope' featuring original photographs, manuscripts and other items connected with this great telescope. There were over 270 visitors to the display. Thank you to Susan Leatherbarrow and Siân Owen for helping to invigilate on the day.
The
http://www.kettlesyard.co.uk/exhibitions/beyond.html
Finding more with
Newton, the Library online
catalogue, is developing with html links to many extra resources. The catalogue records for many new books now
contain online links to publishers descriptions and
tables of contents. Catalogue records
for new Astronomical Society of
the Pacific (ASP) conferences now have links to the full text. False or dud links should be avoided as the
system reports these to the Librarian.
A View to Room A!
Much of interest
in Library Room A
Continuing our look at different parts of
the library, in this issue we look at Library Room A. This light and cheerful room was the sitting
room when the East wing of the Observatory was a house. It contains books from Dewhirst
54 (interstellar medium) to 138 (observational cosmology), all viewed over by a
bust of David Dewhirst himself (astronomer and librarian
here 1950-93). The second bust (on the
desk) is of Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar (1910-1995) appropriately
next to books on Astrophysics of compact objects (58). Take a look at the ‘Neptune Chair’, marked
with the astrological symbol for
New Publications Notice-Board
Printouts of the first page of papers
published by IoA staff are placed on a notice-board
by the photocopier room in the
Society for the History of Astronomy
AGM Conference
At the
Talks on Huggins and spectroscopy
See Librarian for more details
Book News
On display in the main Library Room C for the month of May will be: ‘State of the Universe 2008 : new images, discoveries and events’ by Martin Ratcliffe. Published by Springer Praxis Publishing, 2007. This is a colourful and popular-level review of astronomy in the headlines over the period April 2006 to March 2007, covering stories such as star formation, the Spitzer Space Telescope, planetary disks and much more.
The Second edition of ‘Galactic Dynamics’ by Binney and Tremaine has just been received in the Library, a copy has been placed at 44/BIN and another will on the New Books Display in the Hoyle library area for May.
Cosmology books
There are short (one month) loan copies of the following available from the Library Office:
Peacock – Cosmological Physics
Coles & Luccin – Cosmology
Peebles – Principles of physical cosmology