Books by David Leverington

This volume gives an historical overview of the development of professional optical and radio observatories from 1945 to today. It covers the environment in which these facilities were developed by organisations in the United States, Europe and elsewhere, often led by larger-than-life individuals, as well as exploring the financial and political factors that both constrained and encouraged progress. As ever more expensive optical facilities were built, they exploited new technologies to significantly improve their performance: CCDs, active and adaptive optics, and spun honeycomb and segmented mirrors. The second half of this volume turns to the parallel history of radio astronomy facilities throughout the world, finishing with the ALMA observatory in Chile. This is the ground-based companion to the author's previous work on space astronomy, New Cosmic Horizons (2001). It is written for both technical and non-technical readers interested in the modern history of astronomy and its observational facilities.

Babylon to Voyager and Beyond covers planetary research from the time of the Babylonians and Ancient Greeks through those of Kepler, Galileo and Newton, to the modern era of space exploration. This book outlines major theories and ideas in the development of astronomy, including not only the successes, but also the key failures.

This extensively illustrated book describes the fascinating development of astronomical observations from space from the V2 rocket to the Hubble Space Telescope. Scientific and political aspects of the American, Russian and European space programmes are covered in a style accessible to amateur and professional astronomers.