In the dramatic tradition of the best-selling Longitude, Parallax charts the historical path of observational astronomy’s most daunting challenge: measuring the distance to a star.
The greatest scientific minds applied themselves in vain to the problem across the millennia, beginning with the ancient Greeks. Not until the nineteenth century would three astronomers, armed with the best telescopes of the age, race to conquer this astronomical Everest—their contest ending in a virtual dead heat.
Against a sw…
