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Review - Eclipse - Duncan Steel

Eclipses, especially eclipses of the sun have always held a strong fascination for humankind. Steel traces the history of the eclipse and human reactions both spiritual and scientific through the years. He calls it 'the celestial phenomenon which has changed the course of history' - and he could be right.

From the (relatively) early days of popular science, when it was thought trendy to have the books in a rather strange pocket format, this is much more than an astronomy book. It is, essentially, a book of celestial mechanics, using the solar eclipse of August 1999 as a peg from which to hang a bewildering range of stories: how archaeologists and historians use eclipses to calibrate local calendars; how eclipse cycles can be mapped as woven patterns, revealing their regularity, so that, long before the necessary physical theories were developed, "various individuals of genius, living in societies possessing careful records of past celestial events, were able to interpret those records and deduce the lengths of the years and months to a matter of minutes and seconds"; finally, how findings from eclipses and the occultations of stars by the moon and planets revealed much about the nature of both.

There's a fair coverage of history here too. French astronomer Jules Janssen, for example, in 1870 "was so desperate to get to Algeria to observe an eclipse that he escaped from Paris in a balloon, drifting over the heads of the Prussian troops who had the city under siege". A lot to enjoy - it only scores a little low for being rather pedestrian in style.

Also in hardback:

Reviewed by Martin O'Brien

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