Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to the first edition, 1986
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction to spectroscopy, spectroscopes and spectrographs
- 2 The analysis of sunlight: the earliest pioneers
- 3 The foundations of spectral analysis: from Fraunhofer to Kirchhoff
- 4 Early pioneers in stellar spectroscopy
- 5 Spectral classification at Harvard
- 6 The Doppler effect
- 7 The interpretation of stellar spectra and the birth of astrophysics
- 8 Spectral classification: From the Henry Draper Catalogue to the MK system and beyond
- 9 Spectroscopy of peculiar stars
- 10 Quantitative analysis of stellar spectra
- 11 Some miscellaneous topics in stellar spectroscopy: individual stars of note, stellar chromospheres, interstellar lines and ultraviolet spectroscopy from space
- Figure sources and acknowledgements
- Appendix A List of solar lines designated by letters by Fraunhofer and others
- Appendix B Vogel's first spectral classification scheme of 1874
- Index of names
- Index of star names
- Index of spectral lines
- Index of subjects
Preface to the second edition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2014
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface to the second edition
- Preface to the first edition, 1986
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Introduction to spectroscopy, spectroscopes and spectrographs
- 2 The analysis of sunlight: the earliest pioneers
- 3 The foundations of spectral analysis: from Fraunhofer to Kirchhoff
- 4 Early pioneers in stellar spectroscopy
- 5 Spectral classification at Harvard
- 6 The Doppler effect
- 7 The interpretation of stellar spectra and the birth of astrophysics
- 8 Spectral classification: From the Henry Draper Catalogue to the MK system and beyond
- 9 Spectroscopy of peculiar stars
- 10 Quantitative analysis of stellar spectra
- 11 Some miscellaneous topics in stellar spectroscopy: individual stars of note, stellar chromospheres, interstellar lines and ultraviolet spectroscopy from space
- Figure sources and acknowledgements
- Appendix A List of solar lines designated by letters by Fraunhofer and others
- Appendix B Vogel's first spectral classification scheme of 1874
- Index of names
- Index of star names
- Index of spectral lines
- Index of subjects
Summary
The first edition of this book was published more than a quarter century ago, and at the time of writing this it has long been out of print and is also out of date.
In 2007 I decided to up-date it with this second edition. The main purpose was to bring the story of stellar spectroscopy forwards from about 1970, the closing date for material in the first edition, to about 2000. A secondary aim was to correct a number of typographical and factual errors that had crept into the first edition. The first edition manuscript was mainly handwritten and typed by a secretary prior to submission in the days before computers were widespread for text formatting. On the other hand, this second edition was prepared using LaTeX which has (I hope) permitted amuch lower error rate. I entered the entire manuscript at a keyboard myself, so I am solely responsible if any typographical errors remain.
Since 1970 there has been a huge advance in all fields of astronomy, especially in stellar astrophysics and spectroscopy. In fact, about as many papers on stellar spectroscopy have been published in the research literature in the last three decades of the twentieth century as in all the time before 1970. During these last few decades since the publication of the first edition, many discoveries were made using stellar spectroscopy, and there were also important instrumental advances in spectrograph design.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Analysis of StarlightTwo Centuries of Astronomical Spectroscopy, pp. xi - xiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2014