Cosmic Noise

Providing a definitive history of the formative years of radio astronomy, this book is invaluable for historians of science, scientists and engineers. The whole of worldwide radio and radar astronomy is covered, beginning with the discoveries by Jansky and Reber of cosmic noise before World War II, through the wartime detections of solar noise, the discovery of radio stars, lunar and meteor radar experiments, the detection of the hydrogen spectral line, to the discoveries of Hey, Ryle, Lovell and Pawsey in the decade following the war, revealing an entirely different sky from that of visual astronomy. Using contemporary literature, correspondence and photographs, the book tells the story of the people who shaped the intellectual, technical, and social aspects of the field now known as radio astronomy. The book features quotes from over a hundred interviews with pioneering radio astronomers, giving fascinating insights into the development of radio astronomy.

Spis treści:
1. Prologue
2. Searching for solar hertzian waves
3. Jansky and his star static
4. Grote Reber, science in your backyard
5. Wartime discovery of the radio sun
6. Heys army group after the war
7.Radiophysics laboratory, Sydney
8. Ryles group at the Cavendish
9. Lovell at Jodrell Bank
10. Other radio astronomy groups before 1952
11. Meteor radar
12. Reaching for the moon
13. The radio sun
14. Radio stars
15. Theories of galactic noise
16. The 21-cm hydrogen line
17. New astronomers
18. A new astronomy
Appendixes
References
Index.