Category: History of Astronomy

  • A head full of archaeoastronomy

    I finally got my paws on Duane Hamacher’s The First Astronomers. It was published last year in Australia and you couldn’t get a physical copy for love or money on this side of the planet. Then I finally saw that Amazon had a pre-order button so I clicked it and waited and waited. It eventually…

  • Ancient Astronomy-Astrology

    Most modern astronomers would prefer not to admit it, but astronomy and astrology share a common ancestry. When the ancients were carefully recording the positions of the stars, the time and appearance of eclipses, and the sudden new occurrence of comets, they weren’t doing these things to put a man on the Moon and communication…

  • My Top 10 Archaeoastronomy Resources

    As mentioned previously, archaeoastronomy is having a ‘moment’ and seems to be hugely popular. So this list includes a wider variety of resources than my primers list from last week including some non-academic and older books. Note that I am an affiliate so if you purchase anything after clicking from the following links I may…

  • Primers on the history of astronomy

    The interesting thing about telling my physical science students at the Open University about my studies into the history of astronomy is how often they express interest themselves in learning more – especially since this academic year I am intending to do some fieldwork in archaeoastronomy. Archaeoastronomy seems to be very much of interest to…

  • Parental aspirations and Classics

    There’s a saying that children live out their parents’ aspirations. Sometimes that’s really obvious, because little Jilly has a pushy parent who put her on the stage at 3. But sometimes it’s more about parents and children just being similar. I did Physics, that’s obvious. But I very nearly did a degree in Classics instead.…

  • Autism and Special Interests

    I don’t have a diagnosis yet – the area I live in had a 2-year waiting list before the Covid pandemic, so it will be much longer currently. That said I have an Autism Quotient-50 (AQ-50) score that puts me well into the “has significant levels of autistic traits” range and I have passed all…