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  1. Dartmouth Libraries
  2. Research Guides
  3. Eclipse!
  4. History

Eclipse!

This guide includes curated resources in our collection about scientific, historical, social, and cultural aspects of eclipses. Check out the tab for safe viewing as well in preparation for April 8, 2024!
  • Home
  • Path of Totality - April 8, 2024
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  • Historic eclipses
  • On Display in First Floor Berry
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History of science

  • Cover ArtChasing Shadows: Mathematics, Astronomy, and the Early History of Eclipse Reckoning by Clemency Montelle
    Call Number: Online Resource
    ISBN: 0801896916
    Publication Date: 2011
    Lunar and solar eclipses have always fascinated human beings. Digging deep into history, Clemency Montelle examines the ways in which theoretical understanding of eclipses originated and how ancient and medieval cultures shared, developed, and preserved their knowledge of these awe-inspiring events. Eclipses were the celestial phenomena most challenging to understand in the ancient world. Montelle draws on original research--much of it derived from reading primary source material written in Akkadian and Sanskrit, as well as ancient Greek, Latin, and Arabic--to explore how observers in Babylon, the Islamic Near East, Greece, and India developed new astronomical and mathematical techniques to predict and describe the features of eclipses. She identifies the profound scientific discoveries of these four cultures and discusses how the societies exchanged information about eclipses. In constructing this history, Montelle establishes a clear pattern of the transmission of scientific ideas from one culture to another in the ancient and medieval world. Chasing Shadows is an invitingly written and highly informative exploration of the early history of astronomy.
  • Cover ArtEmpire and the Sun by Alex Soojung Kim Pang
    Call Number: Stacks QB541 .P36 2002
    ISBN: 9780804739252
    Publication Date: 2002
    Astronomy was a popular and important part of Victorian science, and British astronomers carried telescopes and spectroscopes to remote areas of India, the Great Plains of North America, and islands in the Caribbean and Pacific to watch the sun eclipsed by the moon. Examining the rich interplay between science, culture, and British imperial society in the late nineteenth century, this book shows how the organization and conduct of scientific fieldwork was structured by contemporary politics and culture, and how rapid and profound changes in the organization of science, advances in photography, and new printing technology remade the character of scientific observation.
  • Cover ArtHistorical Eclipses and Earth's Rotation by F. Richard Stephenson
    Call Number: Online Resource
    ISBN: 0511525184
    Publication Date: 2009
    This book discusses, in depth, ancient and medieval eclipse observations and their importance in studying Earth's past rotation. This was the first major book on this subject to appear in the last twenty years. The author has specialised in the interpretation of early astronomical records and their application to problems in modern astronomy for many years. The book contains an in-depth discussion of numerous eclipse records from Babylon, China, Europe and the Arab lands. Translations of almost every record studied are given. It is shown that although tides play a dominant long-term role in producing variations in Earth's rate of rotation - causing a gradual increase in the length of the day - there are significant, and variable non-tidal changes in opposition to the main trend.
  • Cover ArtIn Pursuit of a Shadow by Elizabeth Brown
    Call Number: Online Resource
    ISBN: 1107450047
    Publication Date: 2014
    The title page calls the author of this 1888 work 'A Lady Astronomer'. She was Elizabeth Brown (1830-99), and the shadow she was pursuing was the eclipse of the sun on 19 August 1887, which could be best observed in northern Russia. Brought up by her father to make weather observations and to use a telescope, she became a member of the Liverpool Astronomical Society - on behalf of which she undertook her Russian expedition - and was later active in founding the British Astronomical Association. (The Royal Astronomical Society did not at this point admit women.) The book describes her journey, from her arrival at Hull to meet her travelling companion, to Russia, and home again. The actual viewing of the eclipse, at Kineshma, 200 miles north-east of Moscow, was spoiled by cloud cover, but her lively and observant account of her adventures is a fascinating record by a pioneering female scientist.
  • Cover ArtObservations and Predictions of Eclipse Times by Early Astronomers by John M. Steele
    Call Number: Stacks QB175 .S83 2000
    ISBN: 9780792362982
    Publication Date: 2000
    This is the first book to collect together all presently known records of timed eclipse observations and predictions from antiquity to the time of the invention of the telescope. In addition to cataloguing and assessing the accuracy of the various records, which come from regions as diverse as Ancient Mesopotamia, China, and Europe, the sources in which they are found are described in detail. Related questions such as what type of clocks were used to time the observations, how the eclipse predictions were made, and how these prediction schemes were derived from the available observations are also considered. The results of this investigation have important consequences for how we understand the relationship between observation and theory in early science and the role of astronomy in early cultures, and will be of interest to historians of science, astronomers, and ancient and medieval historians.

History of eclipses and society

  • Cover ArtAstronomy and calendar in ancient Rome: the eclipse festivals by Leonardo, Magini
    Call Number: Stacks QB22 .M34 2001
    ISBN: 9788882651183
    Publication Date: 2001
  • Cover ArtEclipse by Bryan Brewer; Herbert Franke (Foreword by)
    Call Number: Stacks QB541 .B74 1991
    ISBN: 9780932898913
    Publication Date: 1991
    More than 75 maps, diagrams, tables, and color photographs. This is the exciting account -- from the Stone Age to the Space Age -- of humankind's perpetual fascination with the most fleeting and beautiful spectacle in all of Nature: the total eclipse of the Sun. The recurrence of this perfect alignment of the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth has inspired fear and reverence from different cultures all across this planet. Against the backdrop of our modern scientific understanding, the ancient symbolism of this truly awesome event survives as a reminder of our time and place in the universe.
  • Cover ArtEclipse by Duncan Steel; Paul Davies
    Call Number: Stacks QB541 .S65 2001
    ISBN: 9780309074384
    Publication Date: 2001
    Whether interpreted as an auspicious omen or a sentinel of doom, eclipses have had a profound effect upon our cultural development. Throughout recorded history, they have evoked consternation, fear, and dread "as well as awe and wonderment. In Eclipse, Duncan Steel expertly captures our continuing fascination with all manner of eclipses "including the familiar solar and lunar varieties and other kinds involving stars, planets, asteroids, and comets as well as distant galaxies and quasars. Steel helps us see that, in astronomical terms, eclipses are really rather straightforward affairs. Moving beyond the mysticism and the magic, the science of eclipses is revealed.
  • Cover ArtIn the Shadow of the Moon by Anthony Aveni
    Call Number: Online Resource
    ISBN: 0300227574
    Publication Date: 2017
    Astronomer and anthropologist Anthony Aveni explains the history and culture surrounding solar eclipses, from prehistoric Stonehenge to Babylonian creation myths, to a confirmation of Einstein's theory of general relativity, to a spectacle that left New York City in the moon's shadow, to future eclipses that will capture human imaginations. In one accessible and engaging read, Aveni explains the science behind the phenomenon, tracks eclipses across the ancient world, and examines the roles of solar eclipses in modern times to reveal the profound effects these cosmic events have had on human history. Colored by his own experiences--Aveni has witnessed eight total solar eclipses in his lifetime--his account of astronomy's most storied phenomenon will enthrall anyone who has looked up at the sky with wonder.
  • Cover ArtThe mask, the unicorn, and the Messiah : a study in solar eclipse symbolism by Elmer G. Suhr
    Call Number: Stacks BL438 .S8
    Publication Date: 1970
    Volume 3 of the author's triology, The column of the cosmos.
  • Cover ArtA Solar Eclipse by Thomas Crump
    Call Number: Stacks QB541 .C786 1999
    ISBN: 9780094791701
    Publication Date: 1999
    Published in preparation for the total eclip se of the sun due on 11 August 1999, this book sets out the rules of motion of planets and their moons and describes the influence of solar eclipses on people and their actions.
  • << Previous: Science
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  • Last Updated: Feb 7, 2025 1:39 PM
  • URL: https://researchguides.dartmouth.edu/eclipse
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