The Immortal Fire Within

Book excerpt: This, the first full-length biography of Edward Emerson Barnard, tells the remarkable tale of endurance and achievement of one of the leading astronomers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Through his career, Barnard scoured the heavens endlessly, leaving an astonishing legacy of observations - of planets, satellites, comets, double stars, bright and dark nebulae, and globular clusters - that make him one of the greatest observers of all time.Beautifully illustrated throughout, this book includes many of Barnard's famous wide-field photographs of comets and the Milky Way. It provides a complete history of Barnard's fascinating life and work, and offers unusual insight into the astronomers he knew and observatories with which he was associated and will be of interest to astronomers and historians of science.