Langley wrote for the educated general reader, arguing that the young science of the sun and stars’ physical nature deserved the support long given to positional astronomy. He describes sunspots and the solar surroundings, measures of the sun’s energy, the planets and the Moon, meteors, comets and stars, with drawings made at the telescope.
A clear, handsomely illustrated introduction to astrophysics as it stood in the 1880s, from a scientist who helped invent it. Download the free EPUB.