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This book provides a detailed history of stellar interferometry as practised at Mount Wilson Observatory. It covers the origin of the field in the early 19th Century, and its subsequent development throughout the last hundred years at the observatory, including the people, instruments, and methods involved in advancing high angular resolution astronomy. Additionally, two extensive appendices cover the importance of Mount Wilson today as well as an interferometry primer. It is an excellent book for historians, astronomers and anyone interested in Mount Wilson.
Key Features
- Describes the revolutionary work performed at the Mount Wilson Observatory in stellar astrophysics, extragalactic astronomy, and its role in high spatial resolution astronomy
- Focuses on the history and heritage of Mount Wilson
- Accessible to specialists, historians, and advanced amateur astronomers
This volume is part of a large batch of new titles from IoP Publishing. The prices seem to be trimodally distributed; fortunately this book is in the lowest category. There is no index. The page size is slightly larger than usual, possibly to help accommodate the many photos and diagrams which it contains. Even so, the size of some of the images does not do the author justice. Nevertheless, this is a compelling description of a specialized, but fascinating, area of observational astronomy, which also pays full attention to the human aspect, and it is written by an enthusiastic authority who has spent a lifetime at the cutting edge of his subject.
Robert Argyle. October 2021 The Observatory Magazine
Harold A McAlister is regents professor emeritus of astronomy at Georgia State University where he founded the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy (CHARA) in 1983 and served as its director until he retired in 2015. As principal investigator for the CHARA Array, he led the team that turned a dream into a reality when ground was broken on Mount Wilson on July 13 1996. During 2002–2014 he served pro bono as CEO of the Mount Wilson Institute and director of Mount Wilson Observatory.