This excellent book about the astronomers who use the Big Eye—the
five-metre telescope on Mount Palomar in California—was first published in
1991. Not since Fred Hoyle’s novel, The Black Cloud, has there been a better
account of what it is like to be an astronomer peering through one of the finest
astronomical instruments in the world. Richard Preston’s First Light is
published by Corgi, £6.99/$24, ISBN 0552997846.
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