Sheehan

Ever since early stargazers discovered that some heavenly bodies wandered among the others, people have been fascinated by the planets. Kepler calculated their orbits from naked-eye observations; Gali

The Sun may be a mass of incandescent gas, but in the plasmatic reaches of its solar winds spins another seemingly glowing (but relatively minute) orb. The last of the five naked-eye planets discovere

Do we really know what we see through a telescope? How does the ocular system construct planetary images, and how does the brain interpret them? Drawing on both astronomical and psychological data, Wi

The last of Sheehan's three volumes of primary sources on the Irish War of Independence, this book traces the history of the British 5th Division in Ireland from 1920 to 1922, focusing on their accoun

This full-length biography of Edward Emerson Barnard, tells the remarkable tale of endurance and achievement of one of the leading astronomers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. As a 'man who was never known to sleep', Barnard scoured the heavens endlessly, leaving an astonishing legacy of observations – of planets, satellites, comets, double stars, bright and dark nebulae and globular clusters – that make him one of the greatest observers of all time. This book traces Barnard's life from poverty to international recognition. We are told how he grew up fatherless and in hardship during the American Civil War; that he later acquired a small telescope and discovered so many comets that, despite his lack of formal education, he won a position at the Lick Observatory, California. His success as a professional astronomer then unfolds, and we are told, in particular, how he discovered the fifth satellite of Jupiter and pioneered wide-angle photography of comets and the Mil

Having edited accounts of British servicemen who served in Ireland during the revolution (British Voices), Sheehan here combs the official British military record of the campaign, now at the National

Twenty years after the Viking missions of the ’70s, we are finally going back to Mars. No fewer than ten missions are planned for the period between 1996 and 2003, and it is likely that human explore