Yale University Library Research Guides: Sky, Cosmos, and Culture: Modern Astronomy Around the World

Books of Note

China in Space by Brian Harvey
Call Number: Online book.
ISBN: 9781461450436
Publication Date: 2013-03-27
Rockets were invented in China, the home of many modern inventions, including ancient astronomy, and were used originally for military purposes in the 13th century. The Chinese space program was founded in October 1956 by the father of Chinese rocketry, Tsien Hsue Shen, who lived in California in the 1930s until his expulsion as a Chinese spy. In recent times there have been three manned spaceflights, highlighting China's ambitious space program and generating worldwide interest. Future missions are planned, including a mission to go to Mars. The explosive growth of China's innovative and rapidly developing space program in recent years has made it a "hot" topic in international space policy. This follow up to Harvey's earlier book, China's Space Program - From Conception To Manned Spaceflight (2004) bring us up to date with everything that is happening in the Chinese space program today and looks at its ambitious future. The author briefly summarizes how this program evolved from medieval times, and uncovers the truth behind the bland, unreliable, and generally uninformative news releases issued around each space mission. It also examines the key features of the program, previously unknown to the outside world.
The Emergence of Astrophysics in Asia: Opening a New Window on the Universe by Tsuko Nakamura, Wayne Orchiston
Call Number: Online only
ISBN: 9783319620824
Publication Date: 2017
This book examines the ways in which attitudes toward astronomy in Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Taiwan, Thailand and Uzbekistan have changed with the times. The emergence of astrophysics was a worldwide phenomenon during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and it gradually replaced the older-style positional astronomy, which focused on locating and measuring the movements of the planets, stars, etc.. Here you will find national overviews that are at times followed by case studies of individual notable achievements. Although the emphasis is on the developments that occurred around 1900, later pioneering efforts in Australian, Chinese, Indian and Japanese radio astronomy are also included. As the first book ever published on the early development of astrophysics in Asia, the authors fill a chronological and technological void. Though others have already written about earlier astronomical developments in Asia, and about the recent history of astronomy in various Asian nations, no one has examined the emergence of astrophysics, the so-called ‘new astronomy’ in Asia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Exploring the History of Southeast Asian Astronomy: A Review of Current Projects and Future Prospects and Possibilities by Orchiston, Wayne; Vahia, Mayank N.
Call Number: Online book.
ISBN: 9783030627775
Publication Date: 2021
This edited volume contains 24 different research papers by members of the History and Heritage Working Group of the Southeast Asian Astronomy Network. The chapters were prepared by astronomers from Australia, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Scotland, Sweden, Thailand and Vietnam. They represent the latest understanding of cultural and scientific interchange in the region over time, from ethnoastronomy to archaeoastronomy and more. Gathering together researchers from various locales, this volume enabled new connections to be made in service of building a more holistic vision of astronomical history in Southeast Asia, which boasts a proud and deep tradition.
The History of Modern Astronomy in Japan by Tomokazu Kogure
Call Number: Online book.
ISBN: 9783030570613
Publication Date: 2021
This book considers the history of modern astronomy and astrophysics in Japan by comparing with the development of astrophysics in western countries. Astrophysics essentially arose in three separate fields: astronomical spectroscopy, stellar structure, and survey of celestial objects. This book introduces readers to the state of astronomy back to the Tokugawa era (18th - 19th centuries), when the chief task of astronomers was limited to the calendar making. With the so-called Meiji revolution (1868), the situation drastically changed. The Meiji Government promoted the modernization of Japan by hiring numbers of foreign instructors in political, social, and cultural affairs, including Construction of Observatory and University. Then the foreign studies of Japanese researchers lasted for many years. After the Second World War, Japan experienced great social and economical growth allowing the constructions of large optical, radio, and space instruments. With this background astrophysics progressed and eventually flourished. The book ends by highlighting Japanese contributions to international collaboration up to the early 21st century. Readers of this book will understand how astrophysics has grown into one of the major sciences in Japan, and how the works of individual astronomers are contributing to the global advancement of knowledge of the universe.
Nihon no tenmongaku no hyakunen = one hundred years of astronomy in Japan / Nihon Tenmongakkai Hyakunenshi Hensan Iinkai hen. 日本の天文学の百年 = one hundred years of astronomy in Japan / 日本天文学会百年史編纂委員会編
Call Number: QB33.J3 .N54X 2008
ISBN: 9784769910787
Publication Date: 2008
Observatories and Telescopes of Modern Times by David Leverington
Call Number: QB81 .L48X 2017 (Bass Library)
ISBN: 9780521899932
Publication Date: 2016-11-24
This volume gives an historical overview of the development of professional optical and radio observatories from 1945 to today. It covers the environment in which these facilities were developed by organisations in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, often led by larger-than-life individuals, as well as exploring the financial and political factors that both constrained and encouraged progress. As ever more expensive optical facilities were built, they exploited new technologies to significantly improve their performance: CCDs, active and adaptive optics, and spun honeycomb and segmented mirrors. The second half of this volume turns to the parallel history of radio astronomy facilities throughout the world, finishing with the ALMA observatory in Chile. This is the ground-based companion to the author's previous work on space astronomy, New Cosmic Horizons (2001). It is written for both technical and non-technical readers interested in the modern history of astronomy and its observational facilities.
Searching African Skies by Sarah Wild
Call Number: Online book.
ISBN: 9781431404728
Publication Date: 2012-10-01
An ambitious scientific project is unfolding in the desert of South Africa, with a multidecade time line that will eventually see expansion into Western Australia--a project that is detailed and celebrated in this book on the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). The SKA will be the largest and most sensitive radio telescope, expanding the capabilities of scientific probing and addressing significant unanswered questions about the universe, such as the formation of galaxies and the nature of gravity. Technology correspondent Sarah Wild covers the important development with this exploration of its implications on an international scale as well as its South African context, from the first telescope built in the country in the 1960s to Xhosa starlore. Interspersed with |Xam bushmen stories rewritten from original manuscripts, this consideration is an informed and thoughtful insight into an exciting step in astronomy.
Space Supporting Latin America: Latin America's Emerging Space Middle Powers by Annette Froehlich, Diego Alonso Amante Soria, Ewerton De Marchi
Call Number: Online book.
ISBN: 9783030385200
Publication Date: 2020
This book examines the background and context of Latin America's political and socioeconomic landscape with a focus on space activities. Firstly, it discusses Latin America's contribution to this sector from an international relations perspective, and explores the debates around the establishment of a Latin American Space Agency. It then highlights space-related capacity building, Latin America’s participation in UNCOPUOS, and international space activities, agreements, and initiatives in Latin America. The second part is devoted to the national space infrastructures and space activities of Latin American states. It analyzes various spacefaring countries in the context of their intra-regional space relations and initiatives as well as their bi-lateral cooperation programs. This timely book is of interest to scholars and professionals working in the space field, especially those in Latin America and other emerging countries.

Astronomy, Conquest, and Colonialism

Astronomy and colonialism are topics that, unfortunately, have been very linked with each other over the past 500 years. The Doctrine of Discovery, Manifest Destiny, and other exploitation mechanisms combined with emerging data-driven astronomical research in Europe and European colonies, and we are still experiencing the painful legacy of this marriage centuries after the birth of the first modern scientific journals.

One search that you can perform in Articles+ is to look for ((astronomy OR astrophysics) AND (imperialism OR colonialism OR "settler-colonialism") *see the search here*. This uses the Boolean operators described on the Finding Books and Articles tab in a complex search that highlights many astronomy-related results. Of course, no search is perfect, so there are a few outliers on unrelated topics. This is a broad search that you could refine to a particular subtopic by adding or modifying keywords.

In the library catalog, we also have some books that describe astronomical expeditions (usually surrounding eclipses and transits, but also other phenomena), many of them in the 18th through early 20th centuries. One example is Corona and Coronet; being a narrative of the Amherst eclipse expedition to Japan, in Mr. James's schooner-yacht Coronet, to observe the sun's total obscuration, 9th August, 1896; by Mabel Loomis Todd. This item is public domain in HathiTrust, and it is fairly representative of the genre. Alex Soojung-Kim Pang's Empire and the sun: Victorian solar eclipse expeditions is a useful title to read about expeditions more broadly. (Note that the clickable subject terms on the link record to Pang's book include "scientific expeditions.")

A lot of information on the history of astronomy and how it intersects with colonialism, white supremacy, and related topics will be US-centric, at least at first glance, when searching in Articles+, Google, and other tools. This is useful when looking up how colonialism impacts the conflict on Mauna Kea/Mauna a Wākea, but it may be limiting when searching for information on astronomy in colonial India, where the colonizers were (at least most recently) the British Empire; diving into sources about Mayan astronomy, book-burning, and Spanish missionary activity in Central America; or tracing the impact of Chinese astronomy on other East Asian cultures throughout history. For some of these searches, knowing a language in addition to English can open up the range of scholarly materials available for searching. We have several area studies guides on the Research Guides page that can help you locate a non-English-language database.

As always, though, whatever your question, feel free to ask your librarian to help you locate sources and find what you need.

Sky, Cosmos, and Culture: Modern Astronomy Around the World

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Books of Note

Astronomy, Conquest, and Colonialism

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