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Annals of the Deep Sky is a comprehensive reference that guides amateur and semipro astronomers into every mind-boggling corner of the observational universe. Each volume presents extensive descriptions of prominent stars and deep-sky objects. No other popular work in astronomy provides the comprehensive historical background and astrophysical appraisals of prominent stars and celestial objects.
This volume is dedicated to the Milky Way’s nearest and largest satellite galaxies, the Magellanic Clouds. Throughout history they have been the subject of awe and wonder, catching the eye of Indigenous peoples of Australia and New Zealand, 16th-century mariners, and astronomy’s pioneer observers such as Nicolas-Louis de Lacaille, James Dunlop, and John Herschel. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, northern astronomers began travelling to the Southern Hemisphere to photograph, map out, and study the celestial constituents of what they referred to as Nubecula Major and Nubecula Minor. This book presents not only a thorough historical account of the clouds dating back 40,000 years, but also how astronomers’ ideas of the Clouds have changed over the decades — particularly on the Clouds’ origins, interactions with the Milky Way, and the quizzical aspects of star formation posed by their many unusual clusters and H II regions. Come discover the observational richness and astrophysical conundrums that are the Magellanic Clouds, true treasure islands lying just beyond our Galactic shores.
Volume 9 also includes two special fold-out maps for exploring the Magellanic Clouds in more detail, one showing the Large Magellanic Cloud and the other the Small Magellanic Cloud plus extra detail on the Tarantula Nebula, the star-forming region also known as 30 Doradus.
