February 2, 2011
The Classics
image by " rel="nofollow Chuck Wood] |
These are the lunar books I started reading when I was learning the Moon in my 20s. I started with WIlkins and Moore, which was given to me by a friend. It's maps were too full of hard to read detail to be very useful for comparing with photos or using at a telescope, but reading the descriptions whetted my appetite to not just detect all the minute features described but to understand them. I have the invoice, dated 16 June, 1969, from when I bought Elger's The Moon for 30 shillings at Dawsons book shop on Pall Mall in London. This 1895 classic has four quadrant " rel="nofollow maps and concise descriptions of each named feature. We use Elger's descriptions in the Moon-Wiki. Can't remember where I got Goodacre's book, my favorite, but I did have it rebound a few years ago. It had a yellowing piece of lined paper glued in with these words, with the authors complts, & thanks, but no signature. I like this book because the 25 section maps are clean and still very useful, the descriptions are a little more lively than Elger's, and there are numerous simple [/October+14%2C+2010 drawings] of features. Sadly, neither Goodacre nor Wilkins and Moore are online, but the 75 year copyright protection expired for Goodacre in 2006 so it could become legally available. But I don't care, I've got my hard copies and enjoy pulling them off the shelf and making some sort of physical connection with the authors!
|