First Light - Hardcover

Preston, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0356188434 ISBN 13: 9780356188430

Publisher: Little, Brown, 1991

Synopsis

The author writes in this book about the lives and work of astronomers. He spent a year visiting Palomar Mountain in southern California where he learned how astronomers explore the infinite deep. Since the Hale Telescope at Palomar opened its shutter to "first light" in 1949, the observatory has been a mecca for generations of astronomers and remains to this day the largest working optical telescope in the world. The book provides portraits of characters as diverse and eccentric as James Gunn, a nearsighted gadgeteer who builds instruments for the Hale Telescope from junk parts and Juan Carrasco a former barber from Texas who is the only person allowed to move the "big eye" across the sky.

About this title

About the Author

Richard Preston received The Overseas Press Club of America's 1995 Whitman Bassow Award for "best reporting in any medium on environmental issues" forThe Hot Zone. First Light, Preston's first book, won the American Institute of Physics Science Writing Award. He is a regular contributor toThe New Yorker. Preston lives in Princeton, New Jersey, with his wife and children.

From the Inside Flap

before Richard Preston wrote about horrifying viruses in The Hot Zone, he turned his attention to the cosmos. In First Light, he demonstrates his gift for creating an exciting and absorbing narrative around a complex scientific subject--in this case the efforts by astronomers at the Palomar Observatory in the San Gabriel Mountains of California to peer to the farthest edges of space through the Hale Telescope, attempting to solve the riddle of the creation of the universe.

Richard Preston's name became a household word with The Hot Zone, which sold nearly 800,000 copies in hardcover, was on The New York Times's bestseller list for 42 weeks, and was the subject of countless magazine and newspaper articles. Preston has become a sought-after commentator on popular science subjects.

For this hardcover reprint of what has been called "the best popular account of astronomy in action," (Kirkus Reviews) he has

Edition details

• Publisher: Little, Brown
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0356188434
• ISBN 13: 9780356188430
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 272