Fire in the Sky: Comets and Meteors, the Decisive Centuries, in British Art and Science

  • Roberta J.M. Olson &
  • Jay M. Pasachoff
Cambridge University Press, £50, $74.95

Roberta J.M. Olson and Jay M. Pasachoff look back to what they call the golden age of British astronomy and art in Fire in the Sky: Comets and Meteors, the Decisive Centuries, in British Art and Science (Cambridge University Press, £50, $74. 5). They say that a greater number and variety of paintings and drawings of comets and meteors were produced in Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries than in other Western countries The Smyths, father and son, typified the widespread interest in astronomy at the time. William Henry Smyth was a keen amateur astronomer and an officer in the Royal Navy. His son, Charles Piazzi Smyth, became Astronomer Royal for Scotland in 1845 at the young age of 26, and was a prolific painter of astronomical phenomena. The picture above is his watercolour of Coggia's comet over Edinburgh in 1874. The book's authors say that Charles Piazzi was one of the first to champion the idea of placing observatories on mountains.