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Title details for Keep Watching the Skies! by W. Patrick McCray - Available

Keep Watching the Skies!

The Story of Operation Moonwatch and the Dawn of the Space Age

by W. Patrick McCray
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When the Soviets launched Sputnik in 1957, thousands of ordinary people across the globe seized the opportunity to participate in the start of the Space Age. Known as the "Moonwatchers," these largely forgotten citizen-scientists helped professional astronomers by providing critical and otherwise unavailable information about the first satellites. In Keep Watching the Skies!, Patrick McCray tells the story of this network of pioneers who, fueled by civic pride and exhilarated by space exploration, took part in the twentieth century's biggest scientific endeavor.
Around the world, thousands of teenagers, homemakers, teachers, amateur astronomers, and other citizens joined Moonwatch teams. Despite their diverse backgrounds and nationalities, they shared a remarkable faith in the transformative power of science—a faith inspired by the Cold War culture in which they lived. Against the backdrop of the space race and technological advancement, ordinary people developed an unprecedented desire to contribute to scientific knowledge and to investigate their place in the cosmos. Using homemade telescopes and other gadgets, Moonwatchers witnessed firsthand the astonishing beginning of the Space Age. In the process, these amateur scientists organized themselves into a worldwide network of satellite spotters that still exists today.
Drawing on previously unexamined letters, photos, scrapbooks, and interviews, Keep Watching the Skies! recreates a pivotal event from a perspective never before examined—that of ordinary people who leaped at a chance to take part in the excitement of space exploration.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    August 10, 2021

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781400829705

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781400829705
      • File size: 14093 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from April 28, 2008
      McCray, professor of history at the Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, has previously written about "big science" in Giant Telescopes: Astronomical Ambition & the Promise of Technology. Here, he examines "small science" at the dawn of the space age: Project Moonwatch, in which groups of non-scientist volunteers dutifully observed the passage of artificial satellites in the sky. The project's mastermind, astronomer Fred Whipple, intended to provide a manual backup for the automated camera system that was meant to track satellites, a huge, multi-national science effort. At a time when very little was known about the ionosphere and upper atmosphere, armchair astronomers of all backgrounds turned out in the thousands to aid the scientific pursuit of knowledge (and, to a lesser extent, fight the Commies); when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, it was the Moonwatchers who provided the first observations to astronomers at the Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory. McCray's history is full of fascinating individuals-not only Whipple, a legend among scientists for his energy and creative engineering, but "citizen heroes" as well. McCray has included a useful bibliography, and a helpful list of acronyms and people, but his text is jargon-free. This pop science takes a fascinating look at a fundamental, and almost-forgotten, moment in Space Age history.

    • Library Journal

      Starred review from May 12, 2008
      McCray, professor of history at the Univ. of California, Santa Barbara, has previously written about "big science" in Giant Telescopes: Astronomical Ambition & the Promise of Technology. Here, he examines "small science" at the dawn of the space age: Project Moonwatch, in which groups of non-scientist volunteers dutifully observed the passage of artificial satellites in the sky. The project's mastermind, astronomer Fred Whipple, intended to provide a manual backup for the automated camera system that was meant to track satellites, a huge, multi-national science effort. At a time when very little was known about the ionosphere and upper atmosphere, armchair astronomers of all backgrounds turned out in the thousands to aid the scientific pursuit of knowledge (and, to a lesser extent, fight the Commies); when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, it was the Moonwatchers who provided the first observations to astronomers at the Smithsonian Astronomical Observatory. McCray's history is full of fascinating individuals-not only Whipple, a legend among scientists for his energy and creative engineering, but "citizen heroes" as well. McCray has included a useful bibliography, and a helpful list of acronyms and people, but his text is jargon-free. This pop science takes a fascinating look at a fundamental, and almost-forgotten, moment in Space Age history.

      Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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