G. A. Miller

Channels of Mars

Victor R Baker 1982 Bristol: Adam Hilger xii + 224 pp price £22.50 (IOP members price £16.90) The channels of Mars have long been the subject of considerable discussion and debate. These range from Giovanni Schiaparellis late 19th century accounts of Martian canali, through Percival Lowells proposals that they were irrigation channels made by intelligent creatures, to the photographic information sent back by the Mariner and Viking space missions.

The Spectacle of Memory: Realism, Narrative, and Time Travel Cinema

Henri Bergson once argued that “the mechanism of our ordinary knowledge is of a cinematographical kind.”2 Bergson resorts to the cinematograph as a metaphor in his discussion of becoming and its relation to perception and knowledge: “We take snapshots, as it were, of the passing reality, and, as these are characteristic of reality, we have only to string them on a becoming, abstract, uniform, and invisible, situated at the back of the apparatus of knowledge, in order to imitate what there is that is characteristic of this becoming itself. Perception, intellection, language so proceed in general” (306). For Bergson, cinema mirrors our natural perceptual schema—from the initial images of reality, our intellects engage in an ongoing process of transforming these into linear narratives. This consistent ordering of reality constitutes the basis of becoming as we continually revise our own linear narrative in relation to the perceptions that our brain orders into coherence on a constant basis.

Questions to the Universe: Astronomy and Astrophysics Series Vol 14

Michael Heller 1986 Tucson: Pachart Publishing xi + 152 pp price

James Lick's Monument: The Saga of Captain Richard Floyd and the Building of the Lick Observatory

38 (paperback) ISBN 0 88126 008 8 How deeply can one go into space-time (what Heller calls macroscopic pre-physics) and how far can one go in space-time (the legitimacy of extending physical laws to regions beyond our direct observational control)? These two questions are posed by the author in his introduction to this collection of notes from ten lectures on the foundations of physics and cosmology, delivered by him at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies in Cracow (Poland), the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), the Catholic University of America, Washington, and the University of Dallas, Texas. The lecture titles include space-time architecture, cosmological extrapolation and the direction of time – the great controversy.

Secrets of the Sun

Helen Wright 1987 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press xvi + 231 pp price £25 ISBN 0 521 32105 0 The centenary of the opening of the Lick Observatory on Mount Hamilton, California, as part of the University of California will be on 1 June 1988. This absorbing and fascinating account of the characters involved in the inception and construction of the first high-altitude astronomical observatory should be a fitting contribution to the celebrations.

Doppler Radar and Weather Observations

Ronald G Giovanelli 1984 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press xi + 116 pp price £11.95 ISBN 0 521 25521 X By the time he died in January 1984, Ronald Giovanelli had had more than 80 papers published on solar physics, optics and instrumentation. He was arguably the solar astronomer having the longest association with solar research, and consequently was an ideal author for a book about our nearest star.

The Story of Astronomy in Edinburgh

Richard J Doviak and Dusan S Zrnic 1984 Orlando: Academic xvii + 458 pp price £46.50 ISBN 0 12 221420X To a large extent this book is based on lectures given in a course at the University of Oklahoma. Material from the book has also been used in a one-week course on radar meteorology offered by the Technology Service Corporation.

The Solar System

Hermann A Bruck 1983 Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press viii + 151 pp price £8.50 ISBN 0 85224 480 0 In 1972 Hermann Bruck wrote a booklet on the history of the observatory and of the chair of astronomy at the University of Edinburgh. This stimulated him to write a much fuller account of the lives and works of his predecessors as Astronomer Royal for Scotland and Regius Professor of Astronomy at the University of Edinburgh.

The Catastrophic Universe: An Essay in the Philosophy of Cosmology

Barrie W Jones 1984 Oxford: Pergamon xviii + 336 pp price £24.25 (£11.75 paperback) ISBN 0 08 026496 4 Hdbk, 0 08 026495 6 Pbk Although intended as an introductory account of the solar system, this book would also appeal to those who already have some knowledge of the subject. The author has managed to combine historical details with a review of much of the current understanding of our planetary system.

The Milky Way: The Structure and Development of Our Star System

A G Pacholczyk 1984 Tucson: Pachart 126 pp price