The Story of the Heavens

About this book

Nebulae gather into luminous clouds, planets trace their paths and the great distances between stars begin to take shape in the imagination. Robert Stawell Ball guides readers through astronomy with the enthusiasm of a gifted lecturer.

The Story of the Heavens presents the discoveries and methods available to late nineteenth-century science, combining explanation with illustrations that made the universe feel newly accessible. Some measurements and theories have since changed, but Ball's patience and sense of wonder survive. His pages belong to the age when astronomy was learning to speak to a wide public.