Astronomy (DK Eyewitness Books)

Astronomy (DK Eyewitness Books)
Publisher: DK CHILDREN | 2008 | ISBN: 0756637678 | Pages: 72 | PDF | 25,4 MB 

The word "astronomy" comes from a combination of two Greek words: astron, meaning "star" and nemein, meaning "to name." Even though the beginnings of astronomy go back thousands of years before the ancient Greeks began studying the stars, the science of astronomy has always been based on the same principle of "naming the stars." Many of the names come directly from the Greeks, since they were the first astronomers to make a systematic catalog of all the stars they could see. 
A number of early civilizations remembered the relative positions of the stars by putting together groups that seemed to make patterns in the night sky. One of these looked like a curling river, so it was called Eridanus, the Great River; another looked like a hunter with a bright belt and dagger and was called Orion, the Hunter. Stars are now named according to their placement inside the pattern and graded according to brightness. For example, the brightest star in the constellation Scorpius is called a Scorpii, because a is the first letter in the Greek alphabet. It is also called Antares, which means "the rival of Mars," because it shines bright red in the night sky and strongly resembles the blood-red planet Mars

The most trusted nonfiction series on the market, Eyewitness Books provide an in-depth, comprehensive look at their subjects with a unique integration of words and pictures.
Superb full-color photographs of scientific instruments, experiments, and innovative 3-D models reveal the discoveries and research that have transformed our understanding of the Universe. Learn how space probes photograph planets, what causes a meteor shower, what makes Mars red, why the Sun shines, where the Moon came from, how the first telescopes worked, the stages in the life of a star, and more.

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