Astronomy Through the Ages

  • Robert Wilson
Taylor and Francis/ Princeton University Press, £19.95, $29.95

The ancient Egyptians combined star-gazing with mythology, as this painting on papyrus from a Ptolemaic temple demonstrates. As well as showing the signs of the zodiac of Dendara, it includes sa'mut (the hippopotamus with a crocodile on her back), Meskhetiu (the bull) and Selket (the scorpion goddess). But it was the Greeks who laid the foundations of astronomy as we know it. The invention of the telescope provided the next great leap forward, and advances in the past few years have given us a much more detailed view of the heavens. The development of astronomy from the early astrology of the Babylonians in 5000 BC to Hubble and beyond are chronicled by Robert Wilson in Astronomy Through the Ages (Taylor and Francis/ Princeton University Press, £19.95, $29.95).