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What People Say		'Catchers of the Light' - A History of Astrophotography
		ArtDeCiel Publishing is pleased to announce a FIRST in Astrophotography - the publication of the ONLY detailed, comprehensive and professionally researched History of this immensely popular subject. It is a magnum opus in every sense of the word, comprising - TWO magnificent A4 Sized Volumes, each containing over 800 pages, over 1800 photographs/illustrations, and more than 2000 references to sources. Don't take note of what we think, but read what the people who really know have to say about the Book: "It is rare to find a magnum opus in astronomy that is so detailed, so interesting, and so expert over a wide range that it is hard to carry across the magnificence of this work...I highly recommend this .. to all with an interest either in the history of astronomy or in the history of photography." -Jay M. Pasachoff, Memorial Professor of Astronomy, Williams College; from April 2013 Newsletter of the Historical Astronomy Division, American Astronomical Society "This book is truly a magnum opus, a labour of love, and a great work of scholarship. It is authoritative, detailed, thorough, superbly illustrated, well referenced, and all-encompassing. There is no nook or cranny of the history of astronomical photography or its proponents that has not been investigated, noted, and embellished with a relevant image. It is worth every single cent of its price. It is an essential addition to every astronomy library. Anyone with even a vague interest in the development of astrophysics will need to have this book to hand; it is a vital and reliable starting place for any historical research into the last two centuries of astronomical endeavour." -Professor David W. Hughes, 'Observatory' magazine, February 2015
The Book		The First Detailed & Comprehensive Book Ever Published on the Subject
Over 1600 A4 Pages		Biographies of 46 'Great' Pioneers of Astrophotography
What It Contains		About the Book
Over 1800 Photographs		Drawings, Maps, Images & Family Trees
		The ‘Catchers of the Light’ tells the true stories of the men and women who first photographed the heavens. Their lives are ones full of adventure, adversity and triumph - which would test the abilities of even the best author or screenwriter to recreate as a work of fiction. Sadly their names are largely unknown and all but forgotten - confined now to the closed pages of history. Through the book you are about to read, they come alive once again. You will learn of the Scottish teacher from Dundee, Williamina Paton Stevens Fleming, who despite being abandoned, pregnant and alone in a strange country, gained employment as the housekeeper to a famous Harvard astronomer, and who became an eminent astronomer in her own right - even naming her son Edward Charles Pickering Fleming after her saviour. Or of the young boy, Edward Emerson Barnard raised in the slums of Nashville, Tennessee during the American Civil War, and who dared to look up at the stars and dream, amid the cholera and death that surrounded him; and yet survived to capture some of the finest images of the heavens ever taken. Or of the Irish Lord, William Parsons who married a rich heiress for her money, but in the end found true love, and the time to create a telescope in the grounds of his great estate, which enabled mankind to see for the very first time what the universe truly looked like. Or of Milton Lasell Humason, who began his life driving mules up a mountain carrying the materials to build a Great Observatory, who then became its Janitor, then its Night Assistant and finally despite having no qualifications and little education - a Staff Astronomer there - working with his famous collaborator Edwin Powell Hubble, who together put a ‘yardstick’ on the size of the Universe. And of the fisherman’s son from Estonia, Bernhard Voldemar Schmidt who blew off his right hand as a young boy in an experiment with gunpowder that went horribly wrong, but nevertheless lived to grind - literally single-handedly an optical system which is now aboard a Great Space Telescope, that has been used to find other ‘Earths’ orbiting distant stars - and whose sad fate was to be left to die unrecognised and alone in a Lunatic Asylum. This book tells their stories and those of the many others who had to overcome misfortune, disease, war, death, Irish Leprechauns and even very unfriendly Cannibal natives before they could even begin to take the many hundreds of photographs you will see in its 1600 pages. The book is divided into nine parts, each covering a specific aspect of the history of astronomical photography - its Origins, Lunar, and Solar Astrophotography, Solar System and Deep Space, Astrophotography, Photographic Astronomical Spectroscopy, Photographic Sky Surveys and Modern Digital Astrophotography. Also included are a number of useful Appendices on Astrophotography and a comprehensive Index.
Magnum Opus		About the Author
9 Parts & 8 Appendices		On All Aspects of Astrophotography
		Its Author Dr. Stefan Hughes has spent seven years researching and writing this book, as well as the forty years of experience and expertise needed to complete this magnum opus in a diverse career as an amateur and professional Astronomer, a qualified Genealogist and a Historian. As a young boy the Author too like Edward Emerson Barnard looked up at the stars and wondered, marvelling at the magnificent photographs he saw in the pages of his books - and especially the iconic ‘Horsehead’ nebula, longing to see it in his modest telescope - only to be disappointed. Forty years later he succeeded through the ‘eyes’ of the modern wonders of the Digital Camera and the GOTO telescope. This inspired him to write a book of which one eminent astronomer wrote: "It is rare to find a magnum opus in astronomy that is so detailed, so interesting, and so expert over a wide range that it is hard to carry across the magnificence of this work." The Author has created a book which fully encapsulates the inscription found in an Ancient Egyptian Tomb, which reads: "Speak My Name and I Will Live for Ever" In doing so he has ensured that the lives of the men and women who captured the heavens on photographic plate, plastic film and computer chip will not be forgotten. "Every day our eyes catch the light of our memories – time spent with family, the journey to work, a special holiday, a beautiful sunset or a dark starlit night. Each image captured is a picture drawn in light – a photograph: only to be lost in our minds or forever forgotten. Nearly two hundred years ago a small group of amateur scientists achieved what had eluded mankind for centuries – the ability to capture a permanent record of an image seen by their own eyes – a moment in time frozen onto a surface. They had discovered Photography." They were the ‘Catchers of the Light’.
New eBooks		'Catchers' Tales
		The ‘Catchers’ series of stories like Geoffrey Chaucer’s famous Canterbury Tales are about the lives of ordinary people told against a common ‘backdrop’, his was a Pilgrimage and here it is Astrophotography; but both were of adventure, adversity and triumph - only the ‘Catchers Tales’ are true and based entirely on fact. The ‘Catchers Tales’, each feature a single story taken from the book the ‘Catchers of the Light’. This book tells of the men and women who first photographed the heavens. Their lives are ones full of adventure, adversity and triumph - which would test the abilities of even the best author or screenwriter to recreate as a work of fiction. Sadly their names are largely unknown and all but forgotten - confined now to the closed pages of history. Through the ‘Catchers Tale’ you are about to buy and read, they come alive once again.
Frederick Scott Archer		Collodion Chemist from Hertford
		The tale of Frederick Scott Archer the ‘Collodion Man from Hertford’ is one of injustice, hardship, poverty, an early death and the ultimate insult of total obscurity. His only crime was to give freely to the world an invention which dominated Photography for over three decades; which made others vast fortunes, saved his Government millions of pounds, enabled astronomers to capture stars the eye could not see, and brought his ‘Art’ within the reach of the ordinary man. Today his name is known to none except a few aficionados of Photography. Even historians did him no favours - not even being able to get right - when and where he was born; or bothering finding out who his parents were; and failing miserably to accurately document his life and work. The year 2014 marks the real two hundredth anniversary of his birth - let him be remembered once more as one of the truly great Pioneers of Photography. The story of Frederick Scott Archer (1814-1857), is such a case - where Cicero’s rules of history were completely ignored to the point of both indifference and blatant falsehoods. Not only have historians got the date and place of his birth totally wrong, but his parental background is at best inaccurately documented, furthermore his work is poorly chronicled and most serious of all - his place as one of the great Pioneers of early Photography improperly neglected. He may not be have been as inventive as Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, or as charismatic as Louis Daguerre or as controversial as William Henry Fox Talbot, but nevertheless still deserves to stand in the same Photographic Hall of Fame as they do. This biography of his life has been written to coincide with the true bicentennial of his birth, which takes place in the year 2014. It is hoped that in the years to come, his story will be told in the way that Cicero would have approved. Not every village, town, city or even country can boast a famous citizen who in their life tried to give something useful to the world without any thought for financial gain or personal advancement. The small market town of Hertford in the English county of Hertfordshire is such a place. For it was here that Frederick Scott Archer was born two centuries ago. He is now a much neglected pioneer of early photography, who history has passed by, and for whom the spoils of victory have gone to other much lesser deserving figures. The people of Hertford have erected no ‘blue plaque’ to his memory, simply because they do not know he even existed. I hope this little book can rectify this most unfair treatment of a man who made the fortunes of many and where for him - time stood back and few did little to preserve his name for posterity. This is the story of Frederick Scott Archer - the 'Collodion Chemist from Hertford'.
Pietro Angelo Secchi		God's Astronomer
		The tale of ’God’s Astronomer’ - Father Pietro Angelo Secchi is the story of a young boy born to humble parents who like today’s Pope Francis I grew up to become a Jesuit priest. Throughout his life he had to struggle with his conscience and his faith. As an astronomer and Director of the Observatory of the Collegio Romano, he clearly saw an imperfect ‘Kingdom’ of Heaven’ with dark lines emanating from the stars and spots on the sun; but all too aware that similar radical ideas had brought other scientists into conflict with the church he loved with disastrous consequences. Would he suffer the same fate as Galileo did over two centuries before - forced to recant his beliefs to the world and to God. The Roman Catholic Church has always kept a close eye on the heavens, but an even closer one, on the astronomers who studied it: "I, Galileo, being in my seventieth year, being a prisoner and on my knees, and before your Eminences, having before my eyes the Holy Gospel, which I touch with my hands, abjure, curse, and detest the error and the heresy of the movement of the earth." In these words the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) had recanted his belief that the Earth revolved around the Sun, and now avowed that the Earth was indeed the centre of the Kingdom of Heaven. It was the year 1633 and nothing could move the Catholic Church away from the view that God’s Universe was perfect and without flaws. The Earth did not move; there were no spots on the surface of the Sun or craters on the Moon; and almost certainly no dark lines could be seen emanating from the stars. Galileo renouncing what he knew to be true in his heart, was exiled to his villa at Arcetri near Florence in 1634, where he spent the remainder of his life under house arrest. In 1818 there was born a man who in later life would see all of these things, including the dark lines in the spectral rainbows of the stars. What is remarkable is that his name was Father Pietro Angelo Secchi, a Jesuit Priest; and a firm believer in both his church, and a heaven based on science, not on what his religion wanted it to be. In 1877 Secchi published the results of his great study of 4000 fixed stars, in which he argued that all stars could be classified according their chemical nature as exhibited by the various dark lines found in the ‘rainbow’ of their spectra. Furthermore this classification could be achieved by using only five spectral types. These later became known as ‘Secchi Classes’. The pioneering work of Secchi in the Spectral Classification of Stars, ultimately led to the Harvard Observatory’s Classification as developed by Williamina Fleming, Antonia Maury and Annie Jump Cannon in the 1890s and early 1900s. This in turn formed the basis of the currently accepted Morgan-Keenan system. The accurate classification of stars according to the characteristics of their spectra was the start needed by others to begin the process of understanding their structure and evolution, from the moment of their birth amongst vast clouds of gas and dust, to an end which produces white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes - bodies as strange as they are unbelievable. Father Secchi lived a contented life within the embrace of his venerated Catholic Church and his beloved Pope, but at the same time conducting astronomical research into the very nature of a ‘flawed’ universe. Yet two centuries earlier this very same research would have condemned him to exile or even death. How could this be? How did Pietro Angelo Secchi on his death in 1878 enter the ‘Kingdom of Heaven’ with the full blessing of the Holy Catholic Church, as both Jesuit and Astronomer? This is the story of Pietro Angelo Secchi - 'God's Astronomer and Jesuit Priest'
William Parsons		The 'Leviathan Lord'
		The tale of William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse of Birr Castle, Ireland is that of a real ‘Downton Abbey’. Born into an ancient line and charged with the preservation of his family’s wealth and lands he married a rich English heiress at first for her money, but which eventually turned to love. Out of the great sadness borne from the loss of nine of their thirteen children, in infancy, the couple cared for all who depended upon them. During the Irish Potato famine of the 1840s, the couple did all they could to prevent starvation amongst their tenant workers; and yet, William Parsons found the time to build a Great Telescope known as the ‘Leviathan of Parsonstown’, which he used ‘to afford us some insight into the construction of the material universe’. William Parsons (1800-1867), the 3rd Earl of Rosse was the ‘Great Telescope’ Builder, whose 72-inch Reflector was for almost three quarters of a century the largest telescope in the world. He did something no one else had done before or since - created almost single handedly a telescope of such a size and use it to ‘afford us some insight into the construction of the material universe’. He made drawings of Deep Space Objects (DSOs) which showed for the very first time what many of them truly looked like. It was he who first discovered with his ‘Leviathan of Parsonstown’ the ‘Spiral’ nature of certain nebulae; an event which marked a milestone in mankind’s quest to understand the Universe in which our Earth is a mere speck in its vast expanse. The 3rd Earl of Rosse was born into a time when the amateur could and did make invaluable contributions to science. As a man of learning, possessed of a considerable fortune and great estates in both England and Ireland, he was ideally placed to fulfil his raison d’etre - to build a series of telescopes each larger than the last, so that he might look at the night sky and try to understand what he saw. In order to do so he had to overcome the many obstacles - technical, logistical and financial of which you will shortly learn. How to raise the great fortune needed to build them?; What type of telescope should he build, should he go with the convention of the day and use lenses, or go back to great mirrored instruments of Sir William Herschel, then considered out dated and impracticable?; How could he construct one of a size larger than any other?; And how would it perform in a country that is renowned for its bad weather. The Irish have a saying about their weather, they have four seasons just like anywhere else, only theirs are all wet! Born of an ancient line, it was his duty and obligation to preserve it - firstly by providing a male heir and not least to obtain the not inconsiderable monies necessary to maintain, and if possible add to the family’s landed estates. This he achieved in the time honoured fashion of marrying a rich heiress; preferably one whose father was dead (or soon to be), and thus gaining immediate control of her wealth. The question of love did not in the vast majority of cases warrant even the slightest consideration. We have now set the scene; and can now begin our true tale of adventure, adversity and triumph, set against a backdrop of a privileged aristocracy, great personal tragedy, famine, scientific breakthroughs and an eventual lingering death. This is the story of William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse - the ‘Leviathan Lord of Birr Castle’.
Buy these Books from:		Catchers of the Light Online Store