First Light [antikvár]

Foreword: To Readers and TeachersThe Story Behind First LightFirst Light is nonfiction, a true story about astronomers who are looking for light coming from the edge of the universe. It tells how science is really done - and science is a lot weirder and more human than most people realize. The book has been out of print and hard to find; this is a revised and updated edition. For some reason. First Light has gotten a reputation as a kind of cult classic about science. I never really intended it to be read as a science book, but books, like children, have a way of choosing their own friends.The action centers on the two-hundred-inch Hale Telescope, or the Big Eye. This telescope is a wonder. It sits inside a dome near the summit of Palomar Mountain, in southern California, not far from San Diego. It was built during the 1930s, and is probably the masterwork of the Depression. It is a huge telescope, the heaviest working telescope on earth. Seven stories tall, the Hale Telescope glides so easily on Flying Horse telescope oil that you can move it by hand. It has a mirror two hundred inches in diameter - sixteen feet, eight inches across. The Hale's mirror took fourteen years to cast and polish. During the final stages, the master opticians polished the glass with their bare thumbs. They made a mirror so smooth that if it were expanded to the size of the United States it would not show any bump more than four inches high.The telescope was conceived by an astronomer named13